


there's an amount to take, reasons to take more

by TheMermaidLord



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bat Family, Developing Relationship, Everyone Needs A Hug, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired by Music, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, M/M, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, guess what chapter two has hugging, is that why i wrote it??? maybe so, wow i really should've put more hugging in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMermaidLord/pseuds/TheMermaidLord
Summary: In this universe, Jason Todd comes out of that pit a little less crazy. Instead of a brutal confrontation with the Batman, everything smears all the way out. As things stand, Red Hood is just another rogue.In this universe, Tim Drake loses all his memories a few months after his eighteenth birthday. He's struggling to find his place in the world, to understand what his family is hiding from him.They're figuring it out.





	1. for the warning signs i’ve completely ignored

**Author's Note:**

> this whole fic was inspired by the Front Bottoms' album 'Talon of the Hawk'. specifically, the song 'Twin Size Mattress' which is where the quotes and title are from. if you want a mood for this fic, listen to that song!! the whole album is amazing.

______

' _this is for the snakes, for the people they bite,_

_for the friends I've made, for the sleepless nights,_

_for the warning signs I've completely ignored,_

_there's an amount to take, reasons to take more.'_

______

The boy’s name is Tim Drake. This, he knows. The boy has two brothers and a father, and they all love him very very very very much. This, they tell him. Sometimes they’re trying not to cry when they say it. The boy has been alive for eight months and three days. This, he has counted.

Of course, he was alive before then, too, but nobody was counting for him, then, and now he can’t remember.

Starting from when he can: the first two months of his life were spent in a hospital. Bleach-white, strip-lit, a maze of shiny hard surfaces and the fog of disinfectant and general anaesthesia. Question after question, a different doctor each day come to evaluate the same problem. Brain-damage severe enough to cause memory loss but not inhibit all function, leave him able to speak and walk and think? That’s rare, rare enough to be unheard of, unheard of enough to be deliberate. This, he hears the labcoats say when they think he’s under the blank slide of the painkillers they’re pumping him full with. His resistance to painkillers is above average- they say this as well.

He wants to reassure them. ‘Cause he can’t still think, not really- he’s damaged after all, as it turns out. The real Tim, the other Tim, used to be so goddamn clever. He used to solve mysteries. This Tim has only the misted hush of puzzle pieces that don’t fit together right. His brain is healing, they say, he might remember someday- but Tim only cares about the clever, cares about how now he’s always eight steps behind everyone else.

They asked their questions until they ran out, and nobody could figure out exactly what had gone on inside his head, but nobody could call it dangerous, either, or unhinged. He wasn’t mad, wasn’t bound for the asylum, brain damage or no, and so nobody could think of anything to stop his family finally coming, and so they came. The first hug Dick ever gave Tim took the wind right out of him, and the shock is almost enough to drag in a memory, but then it’s gone and Tim can only think of safe, of happy, of here. Bruce is behind Dick, and Alfred is behind Bruce. Dick, who is his brother. Bruce, who is his father. Alfred, who he supposes is Bruce’s father, in the ways that count.

And Damian, who is _something else_.

The fucking psycho had attacked Tim on sight, barrelling into his chest with cold rage. Bruce had had to manually drag his two sons apart, and Tim thinks Damian was crying by the end of it? but Tim had slipped back into a drugged stupor, so he can’t tell for certain. Since then there’s definitely been nothing but anger, anyways, and other Tim would probably have all the answers, but this Tim has none, so he leaves it alone.

About four months in, he is allowed back to the manor, on twenty different daily pills just in case. And, woah, okay, he lives in a _manor_. The air there is cold and stiff and piled heavy with secrets, and Tim didn’t think that family would feel this clunky and awkward, but what the hell does he know? He keeps to himself until he can figure it out, whatever is wrong here, hoards every scrap of memory from before like jewels. They come when he doesn’t expect it, and go just as easily. They’re useless. Flashes and dark hisses of colour, pain, laughter. Seven months and twenty-two days into this lifetime he finds one he can use, that drifts to him while he’s reading. The memory is of a photograph, clutched tight in tiny hands, _his hands._ The photograph is of the Batman. Oh, alright, then.

So:

  * Tim’s family is weird and definitely, definitely keeping secrets.
  * Tim is a Medical Improbability.
  * One of Tim’s brothers genuinely wishes him death, the other will never look him quite in the eyes.
  * Tim used to solve mysteries. Tim also used to be competent, have plans, know his family, probably sleep well at night without the drugs, run half his father’s company- really he had it all fucking made, most likely. This Tim will get there, damnit, and so he feels he ought to start with the mysteries.
  * The first mystery is the Batman, he’s going to start with the Batman.
  * From what Tim knows, the Batman does rooftops. Dark night and streetlamps and shadows obscuring the moon, and rooftops.



_Know to know no more,_ Tim Drake. Yeah, right. So: it’s four am, and Tim is on a rooftop.

Sneaking out was the easy part, but Tim’s been out for hours and his unused muscles are cramping underneath him. It’s cold and dark and scary, although not as scary as it should be, but most importantly, somebody has been watching him. For a couple of minutes, now. Tim spins, patience cracked, impulse and energy shattering everywhere about him like gunfire. The silent watcher comes out to play, dropping from the roof above him.

There’s a hushed slide of leather and something else, soft and whispering against the hard night. A boy, taller than Tim in combat boots and a red mask drops into his vision. Another vigilante. There’s no press of knowledge against his consciousness this time, though, no sense that he’s missing something, like when he sees photos of the Bat. This boy is new, and judging by the firearms at his belt, dangerous. They regard each other for a second. It’s a silly feeling, visually the guy seems about the same age as Tim, but he can’t shake the sense that he’s encountered something grown up and weary, something he really doesn’t want to know about. There’s no trace of spandex on this guy, after all, just dark, heavy fabrics. Like he has nothing to prove.

And for a second, the press of his gaze- it's almost like being known.

Then the guy opens his mouth, and the illusion is shattered.

“Well well. What’s a poor little teenage billionaire doing on a rooftop like this?” Tim doesn’t know what the guy looks like, but there’s a smirk thick in his voice. So: he knows who Tim is. That doesn’t mean anything- Damian has said poor, ill, clueless Tim is like catnip to kidnappers at the moment, with his usual tact. In terms of the lowlife of Gotham, he’s a _commodity_ , a walking checkbook signed for by Bruce Wayne. This alone should’ve stopped him coming out tonight, practically looking for trouble, but it didn’t.

Seeing no point in lying, he says “looking for Batman.” There’s a snort, but no gun pointed at him, yet.

“Bats? The guy’s overrated. All growly, all ‘ _justice_ ’,” and he imitates a scorchingly deep voice that makes the hairs on the back of Tim’s neck prick up. “You look like you need a mask who’ll help you cut loose a little.”

“And that’s you?” Tim deadpans. The guy barks a laugh, and Tim becomes acutely aware of where he is, what he’s doing, how ridiculous his life is.

“Doll, you wish. I’ve got places to blow up, people to dispose of, you know how it goes,” and his voice rises with mirth as he watches Tim’s grimace. “What, you’re not a fan?”

“Of murder?”

“You know what- nevermind. You sound like _just_ Batman’s type.” And it’s crazy, because Tim doesn’t know anything about this kid apart from the fact that he kills people, that he’s out doing god-knows-what on a rooftop at four in the morning, ( _like you are_ , says the voice in his head) but he doesn’t want him to go. He’s the first person to have looked at Tim without pity, spoken without a world of expectations heavy in his voice. This guy doesn’t know who Other Tim was, probably doesn’t give a shit. But he could give a shit about this Tim, if Tim gave him a reason.

“Slow down,” Tim says, “what do they call you?”

He doesn’t need to see the guy’s face, the grin splits his voice when he says “tell you what, princess, I’ll tell you if you can catch me,” and _fuck_ , he’s fast. He clears the gap between this warehouse and the next with a running jump, and Tim is left there, frozen. Tim, who’s been in a wheelchair for months. Tim, whose head still throbs at what his doctor calls ‘stressful stimuli’. Tim, who is so fucking tired of being treat like porcelain.

He’s running at the edge faster than he knew he could, muscle memory taking over, easing him through the jump that follows. Which: what the _fuck_ , okay, alright. The boy has waited for him on the next roof, he realises with a jolt, but then he takes off in earnest, slipping into the night, and Tim dives after him, and the chase is on.

Gotham has never seemed realer, brighter, focused so sharp it hurts his eyes. His limbs feel alien, so dull and weighty only this morning, now flinging him over the streets so fast he feels like flying, feels so at home it scares him. He’s worried if he thinks about it too long the spell will break so he focuses on the flash of red ahead of him, whooping and catapulting through the air, stronger than he is but heavier too, and Tim is closing the gap, Tim is winning-

The figure stops abruptly and Tim realises too late the row of warehouses has ended. Suddenly fully out of control of his own momentum he whips into the boy full force, knocking them both over but feeling nothing but the sheer _adrenaline_. He realises he’s grinning like a madman, realises he doesn’t quite know who he is. The boy groans beneath him.

“Careful, birdie. Anyone might figure you don’t know what you’re doin’.” His voice is wind-roughened, but Tim knows he’s grinning too. He slides off the guy and comes back to himself all at once, shaking.

“I- I'm sorry. Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry, I’ve got a lot going on- my doctor says I shouldn’t be out of the _house_ \- and this is insane. I don’t know how I even- are you alright- oh _God-_ ” but he’s cut off as the guy laughs beneath him, low and long and distorted by the mask. He sits up, in no hurry, and feels at the bottom of his mask until something clicks and he’s dragging it upwards, until there’s a boy in front of Tim, sheened with sweat and shaking his hair out in the open air.

Tim studies him for a second, halfway to blushing. His hair is dark and curled and shaggy, and unless Tim’s vision has gone funny again there’s a violent streak of white in it at his forehead, stark and unnatural. There’s day-old stubble on his face, but his features are young. Far too young for a mask, really, and there’s a split in his lip oozing blood that didn’t come from any race. When the boy opens his eyes from stretching, they’re electric blue behind a domino mask. They’re not the eyes of a killer.

The boy notices him shaking and frowns, and somehow, it’s a comfort just to be able to see it, instead of a blank red sheet. “Hey, kid, calm down. I don’t have much of a right to judge, but you’re acting a little crazy.”

Tim takes a breath in, lets it go. “I, sorry, I- I just think you might be insane and I’m not sure why I’m not dead, and I think I might be having a panic attack-” The boy raises his hands in a gesture of surrender, and Tim stops talking, focuses on breathing.

“Okay, kid, okay. You’re working through some shit. Hell, we’ve all got issues ‘round here. Cool it. I’ll take you home.”

Tim’s not sure what he wants to say, but what comes out is “You’re my age.” The boy laughs, open and easy, and it’s hard for Tim to remember that he might not be one of the good guys.

“Probably. But- you said you had medical issues, right? I don’t wanna come off patronising, but I'm thinking rooftops and strangers with guns, probably not doctor's orders?”

Tim’s breath crumples out in a sigh. “Not- not exactly. I'm not _sick,_ I just- look, apparently I was hit pretty hard in the head, about eight months back. Everything before then is just blank. This is stupid, this is- I just needed to- to get away?” Cool, he’s already massively oversharing. He doesn’t add _to get away from everybody looking at me and seeing somebody else,_ but surely it’s audible in the tremor of his voice. The boy is gazing at him with concern, face like an open book. It’s not what he expects at all of a self-professed murderer.

The kid gets up, stretches again, at ease in the murky light. “Okay, so this is the weirdest thing to happen to me on patrol _tonight_. But probably not this week. What am I gonna do with ya, kid?” Tim laughs a little, despite himself.

“Sorry, um, I'm not trying to get you to counsel me. I don’t even know your name…” and he makes it an open question. The boy looks down at him, eyes narrowed.

“They call me Red Hood, I guess.”

“Imaginative,” Tim says, and then claps a hand over his own mouth, horrified. The boy, Red Hood, barks another laugh.

“Rude,” he whines, and everything is so weirdly comfortable.

Hood doesn’t look or feel or sound like a murderer, he thinks, and then says as much, because why not? This encounter feels like it’s happening in the twilight hours, where nothing is wholly real, or even corporeal. Hood frowns, scratches his forehead.

“It’s complicated, birdie. I haven’ killed as much as most’ve them think, and I get no pleasure in it. But there’s people in this world we’d all be better off without, and I don’ ignore that, either. There’s those out there who’d disagree.”

“Like Batman,” Tim says, and thinks he understands.

“Yeah. Like Batman. Kid, are you okay?” Hood is clipping his mask back on and Tim is terrified that that’s just the end of that, that he’ll have to go back to suffocating in the manor and forget this ever happened.

He forces the panic down, considers his answer. “Maybe? I came out here looking for the Batman, ‘cause I can’t help but feel like I knew something about him, before, like he was important. But it’s stupid, isn’t it? Every kid in the city idolised Batman.”

Hood says “I didn’t.”

“Oh, you’re a liar. There’s no way.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Tim sighs. “I don’t know? I'm hanging out at the docks with vigilante and it’s almost _sunrise_. I could barely _walk_ until a few months back. Why do you care, anyway?”

Hood shrugs. “I like you, kid. You’ve got some spine. And it sounds like you’re going through it. I get it.” Tim stares at him, unimpressed, but he can’t tell if he’s caused a reaction.

“You get it? Really?” and the brief silence that stretches between them grows sharp edges.

“You don’t know anything about me, kid,” and Tim feels very small, somehow, and very cold. A shiver runs through him as the chilled air whips past, and Hood’s shoulder’s slump, a little. He rubs where his eyes are under the mask with one hand. “Look, you’re lucky I wasn’t busy tonight. I can take you back home, I don’t like the idea of you alone in the dark. But it might be better if you forgot about this. You’re right. It's not sane.”

Tim bites his lip. “I get it, you don’t want me to bother you. But-”

“Bother me?" The expression on Hood's face is almost a leer, but there's something false to it. "I’d race you anytime. Little mystery that you are,” (and fuck, Tim is blushing, now) “but c’mon, kid, you’re smart enough. I'm not the good guy here.”

Safe in the knowledge that, for now, he is _wanted_ , he is _interesting_ , (he's an insecure fucking  _mess_ , apparently) Tim laughs aloud. Hood steps back a little, like he’s at all the insane one here. “Yeah, Hood, I’d figured out you’re not exactly the kittens-out-of-trees kind of mask. But please, I’d put you at brooding antihero at worst. You must be, like, nineteen.” He laughs a little more because he can tell Hood is scowling.

He’s not laughing a second later when Hood scoops him up like he weighs _nothing_ , fits him tight against his chest. “Alright, where to? How did you even get here?”

“Um,” he says, suddenly mortified, “Wayne Manor. I took a cab.”

There’s a shocked silence, and then Hood is laughing at him in earnest, laughs all the way down to the ground until he’s found a bike to hotwire and is fully focused on the task.

The whole scene feels dreamlike, impossible. He’s just given his home address to a masked vigilante, the kind who are always on the news doing crazystupid things, until Bruce turns it over, grimacing, like it might give Tim _ideas_. The kind Dick has warned him can be just as bad as the villains they fight. He’s not scared in the least, and he worries it’s something broken about him. His actions tonight, thinking it over, aren’t the actions of anyone fully in control of himself.

The motorbike engine purrs, and Hood looks up, laughing, and Tim meets him with the widest grin he’s managed tonight, and can’t bring himself to care at all.

He’s still shaking from the ride, the roaring exhilaration of it, his hands around Hood’s waist, when they ease up outside of the Manor gates. Hood is laughing aloud too, rolling joy like thunder, and shit, he doesn’t know how he’s meant to go back to breakfast in bed and a daily airing around the manor gardens after _this_. He realises he hasn’t let go and mechanically releases his arms, climbing off carefully. Everything in the street is still and silent, the city seems to belong to them.

“I’ll see you ‘round, birdie.” Hope explodes inside Tim, as raw and vivid as he’s ever felt it.

“You will?”

“Sure. We had fun, right? Head on down to the docks anytime. But there’s shit besides me down there, and it ain’t on me if any of it has its fun with you.” Tim nods frantically, barely considering the implications of any of it. Hood wants to hang out with him. For Tim now, not for Tim then. (Insecure, validation-seeking  _mess_.)

Oh, yeah. Wait.

“Uh- I'm Tim. Tim Wayne. Even if you won’t tell me your real name.”

Red Hood inclines his head, like he’s laughing, noiselessly. “You thought I didn’t know?”

The motorcycle tears off into the night. Tim, aching with exhaustion now, sets about sneaking back to the house unnoticed and scaling the two stories to his room. He collapses onto his bed so brimming with happiness he can barely breathe.

______

 Course, in this house, the happiness doesn’t tend to stick.

Tim Drake knows this: there’s never been anything quite true about him. Tim Drake’s family disappear for stretches at a time, mostly at night. They get into fights a lot. Tim Drake is littered in scars that nobody will give him an answer about. There are rooms he doesn’t go into, questions he doesn’t ask. Names he doesn’t mention. The media knows he’s going through a ‘tough time’, which he knows because the headlines say it. But Tim knows he could remember eventually what his life is, if somebody would just sit him down and _talk_ to him about it. Bruce asks him meaningless, trivial questions, about what he’s eaten, how he’s feeling. He says ‘I love you’ a lot, and Tim wants to scream at him, to beat his fists uselessly against Bruce’s chest, to say ‘tell me what I'm fucking missing, then.’ Everybody else gets it, apparently, but Tim can’t find the punchline. Damian sneers and taunts, and never seems to be around otherwise. Dick is wonderful, Dick is the best big brother anyone could ask for, and it’s so fake Tim wants to cry. The goodness isn’t fake, sure, but every other thing about him seems skin deep. He supposes Dick hates the lie so much that he has to make everything about himself into a lie so the cracks don’t show. There’s a girl called Cass he knows is family, somehow, knows nothing else about. A girl called Steph whose eyes always look so _sad_. And there’s Alfred, who doesn’t lie but says things like ‘Now, sir, Master Bruce wouldn’t want you to focus on anything but getting better.”

Tim is fine. Tim is so fine that if they ever stopped caring more about deceiving him than knowing him, they would see it themselves.

Tim is so fine he would probably be better by now if they weren’t all treating him like he was fucking already _dead_.

Course, it’s not always like that. Most days it’s better. He loves them all so much that it hurts, and they love him just the same. But he’s hurting for plenty of other reasons too.

______

‘ _it’s no big surprise, you turned out this way,_

_when they closed their eyes, and prayed you would change.’_

______

 The morning after, he’s been allowed to lie in. It’s almost noon when he wakes, and he feels startlingly at peace, curled and sleepy in the sunlight. He checks on his motor function, absent-mindedly curling and uncurling fingers and toes, and sits up when all of a sudden, the night comes flooding back to him, sending him jittering with excitement. He has a friend, kind of. Somebody who looked at him straight and fiery, never once smiled sadly just because Tim was trying his best. 

He’s lying there twenty minutes later, immersed in memories of dancing over rooftops, uncertain just how much of it he dreamt, when Alfred pops his head in.

“My apologies, Master Tim, the household has been a little preoccupied today. Would you like any breakfast? Lunch, rather.”

He smiles at Alfred (probably uncharacteristically widely, but he can’t help it) and says no. He can’t even bring himself to want coffee- his mind is entirely focused on something greater, something far more satisfying. He thinks of Hood stretching above him in the moonlight and laughs aloud. In the quiet normalcy of his room he finds he doesn't know what he's expecting at all- you don't go out for coffee with a vigilante, surely. 

He finds he doesn’t care. It’s so much better than the mansion air, heavy and swarming with secrets, his head too fuzzy to make them out. It frustrates him to tears sometimes. But his thoughts have never been clearer, and he swears the night air is still whipping in his ears.

Still, even remembering the secrets makes the room’s bright walls constrict around him, and he struggles into a sitting position and then stands, ready to face the day.

He’s brushing his teeth when he sees them out the window. Bruce, Dick, and Alfred headed across the lawn to join them. Damian is sulking in the treeline further off.

They’re standing around one of the graves, freshly laid with new flowers. Huh. Another secret drifts to settle atop the others, and he swears he hears the house’s foundations creak.

Scowling, he spits into the sink and glares at his reflection. Slim, raggedy, pale. His ribs show some days, his scars every day. He inhabits a body that’s been played in, ruined and abandoned by someone else, the Other Tim who left him to pick up the pieces. But it can still run, as things turn out. Maybe him and Red Hood can get to some ruination of their own.

Movement catches his eye. The others are heading back inside, while Bruce steps closer to the grave, sinks to his knees all of a sudden. He’s mouthing something Tim can’t make out, and maybe crying, it’s hard to tell. Tim feels so cut off from everything, so cold and analytical, but it’s so so hard to connect with Bruce when Bruce refuses to give, to relinquish anything that could teach Tim who he is.

Other Tim would know what to do, Tim is certain. But this Tim knows some things. Knows that nobody in this house will bother to give him an explanation for what he’s just witnessed even if he asks. Knows that there are better ways of finding out anyway.

_____

Tim’s thighs are burning, and he feels a little sick. He’s pressed up against the keyhole of Bruce’s office, knelt twisted just to get the angle right. He’s barely caught anything said so far, but the other person in there is Dick, and sometimes Dick and Bruce yell.

There are two doors to the room he’s in besides the one he’s listening at, so he thinks he’s got a reasonably good chance of a quick getaway if anyone sees him. Even if not, so what? He doesn’t think he has a single thing to lose. The worst any of the adults would do is look _disappointed_ because eavesdropping was above the old Tim, apparently. The only person in this house he has anything to fear from is Damian, really, as Tim suspects given the opportunity Damian really would try and kill him if he was sure it wouldn’t make his father too upset. Although maybe even then- Damian seems like the ‘better to beg forgiveness than ask permission’ type.

“C’mon, Dad…” he hears, and it wrenches something in his chest. All of the things This Tim knows are caught up in what Other Tim felt, the feelings he gave to Tim, and it’s a confusing spiral inside of him. He suddenly feels a lot closer to everything than he did at the grave. Of course he’s sad that Bruce is upset. But he needs somewhere to put that sadness, or he’ll have to carry it around with him until someone tells him _why_.

“For God’s sake, nobody else blames you!” Alright, so Bruce is being a selfish, self-sacrificing bastard, most likely, and Tim knows this is what Dick thinks because Dick said it to him once, back when he was exhausted from god-knows and used to get the boundaries between new-Tim and old-Tim real blurred.

He leans in, listens extra hard, even though his legs are shaking, his legs that were perfectly fine flying over rooftops hours ago.

He knows what _psychosomatic_ means, he’s not stupid. There’s no biological, medical, rational reason for his energy to be so up and down, and none for his amnesia either. Knowing it doesn’t help. Knowing his own brain is betraying him, holding him back from any kind of a life makes it worse. He doesn’t give a shit what it’s gone through, he can’t fucking remember.

… Getting mad at his own brain is stupid. His life is fucking ridiculous.

“We can’t **know** what he would’ve wanted; he’s **gone-** ”

“ **I know Jason is gone**!”

Oh, right.

So it’s about Jason.

Jason is one of the names Tim can’t say. Alfred’s shown him some photos from when Jason was young, a frantic, streetwise ball of nervous energy. He’d been so terrified Bruce would kick him back out onto the streets he’d started hoarding cufflinks, watches, cutlery.

Jason is dead now. Tim has said his name aloud twice ever, and when it had been at the dinner table Dick’s eyes had clouded over and Bruce had left the room, but before he’d gone he’d looked ever so immeasurably old. Jason was the big brother Tim didn’t get to have, but Jason is also a tragedy that only belongs to the others, apparently. A sadness that isn’t for him.

His legs are screaming, and he finds he can’t sink down out of the position. He doesn’t want to hear anymore so he lets himself keel over silently and stretch on the floor, his eyes slipping shut. His body may be a trembling wreck but something in it knows how to fall. Another mystery to wear.

______

Dinner is served in silence.

Alfred has made paella, and it’s just as amazing as anything else Alfred makes, like Dick says. Thing is, Tim doesn’t really ever eat anything Alfred hasn’t made, so he doesn’t really have a point of reference. He’s itching to finish eating and go to his room, because the second he goes the rest of them go, off to their Big Secret, and then they won’t notice him leave for the night.

Tim doesn’t have a contingency plan for when they eventually do notice, and he knows that he likes contingency plans. Whatever, he’ll figure it out. It might be a symptom of not caring enough.

But he can’t go; Dick is being a Good Big Brother.

Dick is always a good big brother. He usually knows just when Tim needs speech, and when he needs silence. It’s usually silence, because not being allowed to talk about all the big secrets makes the little things he can talk about pretty meaningless. Tim is sure Dick knows this, is sure Dick understands and feels horrible, but he’s not going to make any excuses for anyone without proof.

Anyways, he must’ve been silent for too long, planning his escape last night and now brooding over it, because Dick is bantering and teasing Bruce and acting for all the world like a madman at a funeral. Which.

But it’s okay; Tim knows this protocol. He knows the bits where he has to join in and poke fun at Bruce and Damian, where he has to be overcome by laughter even though he’s pretending to be the bigger person. Or pretending to pretend to be- whatever. For the first time it occurs to him that this is probably how things worked with Jason. Jason wouldn’t have had to try to please Dick, it would’ve been his default setting. Tim feels a little more broken.

Damian is talking about his violin lessons. His teacher is _useless, father, wholly_ and Damian thinks that _really, two ‘artistic’ pursuits becomes timewasting, father_ , and hey, Tim is not the most fucked up person at this table. Nobody’s told him why Damian is the way he is, which. Ha. Surprise, surprise.

Bruce says, wearily, “Damian, it isn’t your job to optimize yourself for any purpose. No skill is detrimental, especially if you enjoy it.”

See? You can’t just say a thing like that to a twelve-year-old and then play happy families.

Tim says “Learning any instrument would be pretty cool,” quietly, and Damian looks at him like he has been scraped off the sole of the shoe of something that has been scraped off of the sole of _Damian’s_ shoe, and oh boy, isn’t Tim thrilled he contributed to this conversation.

“Are you interested in starting?” asks Bruce, because he’s never met a problem of Tim’s he didn’t want to fix, except the important ones obviously. Tim shrugs.

“Probably not. I’d only be able to play on good days, and then I wouldn’t be able to leave the house for it, and I wouldn’t put you guys through listening to me learn, like, trumpet. Or whatever.”

“It would be a waste of money,” Damian agreed, and Bruce looked like he wanted to tell him off but didn’t have the energy.

“I don’t know, Timmy? Get you some bagpipes, move you back in next to Damian. I'm sure you could self teach! I could see it really working out for all of us,” says Dick dreamily, and Tim snickers, on autopilot. Damian reddens.

“You most certainly will _not_. Father-”

“Dick is just fucking with you, kid.”

“Language,” Bruce muttered, then winced. Oh, hi, ghost of Jason yet to leave us alone. Tim feels like an asshole. Ok, that’s enough. He smiles as widely as he can muster and stands up, and Dick frowns at the scrape of his chair against the hardwood floor.

“Hey, thanks Alfred.”

“You are welcome, Master Timothy.”

He slinks out of the dining room, hearing no chatter behind him. He wonders if he just hid himself well enough, he’d catch them in the act of going wherever they go, but he’s almost certain there’s a camera in his room that they check first. It’s fine, so long as they don’t check it any other time.

It’s not fine. What the fuck is his family.

The frustration lingers, marrow-deep in his bones. Tim _knows_ that he used to be so clever, used to have all the answers. He’s clever now, in a way, but the art of cause to effect, picking up on little details, everything it takes to figure things out- he can’t muster it up. Last night was the clearest his mind has ever felt, and even then- fuck. He wonders if his family is disappointed, if they haven’t told him anything because they’d thought he’d have fucking worked it out by now. The press of old-Tim’s knowledge stays with him, in ways he can’t describe, ways that tell him instinctively that the injuries his family ends up with come externally, not from within. That they aren’t abusers, or criminals, or ninjas, and they’re probably not spies either. Every feasible explanation is swiped aside and Tim thinks he’s being laughed at.

Fuck.

He’s made it to his room but he’s kneeling on the floor, hands fisted into the plush carpet, head whirling, chest rising and falling like a lunatic. He instinctively shoots a glance at where he knows the camera is, above his wardrobe, because if they see him like this they won’t _go,_ so neither can he, and Jesus, the air is so thick and stale he could suffocate in here, feels like he might. He grips tighter, forcing his lungs to operate at a normal speed, softening the iron clench in his chest. Gets up, pulls out a book at random, lays on his bed and stares at the pages until the words start sinking in. Hour by hour, the noises downstairs abate, leave him alone in the house. If he thinks anymore about where they keep _going_ Tim might cry, so he thinks about Hood instead.

He stretches and gets up, crosses to his wardrobe, pulls out a hoodie with the Superman logo on it ‘cause he thinks it might make Hood smile. It won’t protect his identity as well as even a domino mask, but at least he’s trying to minimise the chance of anybody recognising him as easy kidnap material, especially after Hood’s warning. Belatedly he considers the idea that this could Hood’s plan to kidnap him by building up a false sense of friendship, but thinks that might be a little convoluted for the guy. He wonders how much he would even care- he gets a friend, Hood gets extortionate amounts of cash. Win-win, or whatever.

Tim shakes off his thoughts and, sighing, performs the ‘Oh-God-I-Really-Am-Dying-This-Time-If-Only-Bruce/Alfred/Dick-Would-Come-And-Help-Me’ fall and groan, stays splayed on the floor for at least five seconds. No sound from downstairs, no nothing. Nobody is watching. The clock reads 12:04. He’d been out for hours searching for the Batman last night, but this time he knows exactly where he’s going.

He approaches the window, slides off the lock, grins. Slips out into the night.

________

_‘I wanna contribute to the chaos,_

_I don’t wanna watch and then complain.’_

______

Hood had laughed at him for getting a cab, last time, and it hadn’t exactly been inconspicuous. Tim doesn’t know exactly who he’s so worried about finding him, but his gut tells him that attention from anyone, the city’s villains or vigilantes, will end in trouble. So he walks, hood up, face shadowed, trusting his body to take him the quickest, safest, quietest route across this city he barely knows. He swears he sees Nightwing once, darting over an alleyway, but the mask doesn’t look back and it’s over so quickly.

It’s a long walk, much longer than it seemed with his arms around Hood’s waist and the roar of the bike in his ears. He doesn’t mind it. He’s seeing a Gotham the manor’s windows don’t like to show him, something grimy and raw and rough to the touch. It’s a city that seems to belong so much more to someone like Hood, leather and all, than someone like Batman, but what does he know? The idea that his absence could be discovered at any point lies heavy in his peripheral, realer to him than it was last night. It makes him walk faster, snapping at his heels, but it feels a lot like excitement too.

If Bruce knew he was doing this, would he be surprised? Tim can’t figure Bruce out, there’s always too many walls in the way. Yeah, their family is messed up, normal precedents don’t really apply, but you don’t trap a kid in a house for months without explanation and then get shocked when he breaks out. Tim thinks? Hell, it’s not like he has much of a concept of normal, either. Surely, it would help if _anybody talked to him about any of this_.

Ahead of him, unexpected, he sees the oil-tarnished glint of water. Around him the shouting has become rougher, the girls on street corners bolder, the buildings squatter and filthy. This part of the city feels damned, biblically, and Tim thinks he could probably say a little too much about why Hood haunts these streets, blackened and unforgiving as they are. He’s cold, and scared, and the air tastes like salt and gunpowder. But there’s no secrets weighted on him, just the discoloured fog. Tim bites back a mad laugh. Yeah, this place will do.

There’s a bus station opposite him, and when’s the last time anybody caught a bus in Gotham? But nobody’s using it to fight or fuck, so he flits to it, hoists himself onto its top, and propels himself from there to the roof of the next house over. On the other side of that there’s a good size apartment block that’ll work just fine, and he tries not to think before scaling it. Tim doesn’t know how his body knows to do the things it does, but he’s petrified that if he pokes at them, they’ll slip away, leave him useless and trembling in the dark.

As he climbs, he becomes aware of the city around him, the noise and the brutality of it. A city like that could hit you hard enough you wouldn’t get up again, and Tim barely knows what he’s doing out here. But, simultaneously, the higher he gets the more separate from it he becomes, until he’s this distinct thing above a violent, shifting entirety. You could get addicted to this, he thinks, thinks at once of Hood’s knife-edge smile. Some more things make a little more sense.

He reaches the top and is quite unsteady again; this surpasses anything he scaled yesterday by far. But it serves his purposes, you can see half the city from up here, certainly all of the docks. Part of him is seeking a splash of red and leather, the rest of him feels like it could spend the rest of its life up here regardless. He sits facing east, watching the heady lights of the city, and lets the time pass.

Tim is brought up from his haze, around half an hour later, by the purr of an engine. Recognition pushes at him, and he knows there’s countless motorbikes in this city but he doesn’t think he’s wrong, either. He scrambles to the edge, watches the bike tear up the same street he’d walked down, directly below. It screeches around a corner, headed along the waterfront.

Tim isn’t aware he’s given chase until he’s flailing in open air, catching onto the adjacent block he’s flung himself at. This is insane, all-encompassingly crazy, but it’s with his permission that his body moves from that building, to the next, to the next. Hood is faster than him, obviously, but Tim doesn’t lose track of him, watches him grind to a halt somewhere familiar. He closes the gap until he’s clinging to a spire overlooking the warehouses they’d met on the previous night, sees Hood standing on one, looking around, uncomfortably vulnerable. Tim grins, his heart _singing_.

He waits until Hood looks ready to leave, then raises his fingers to his mouth and whistles, sharp and piercing, cutting a silhouette against the grimy sky. Hood’s head snaps to him, and neither of them can see the other’s face, but, oh, they’re both smiling.

He brings out a grapple from somewhere, and all of a sudden the claw is biting into the concrete at Tim’s feet. He watches Hood sweep himself off of the warehouse, do something impossibly graceful mid-air, and then he’s landing, right up in Tim’s personal space, his entire body radiating the smirk Tim can’t see.

“Of all the places, Timothy,” the Red Hood whistles, low, “You’re just gonna keep on surprising me, huh. I mean- how did you even _get_ up here?”

Tim furrows his eyebrows, turns to point. “I was on there, watching for you, and then you came past down there, so I guess I followed you past those ones and- damn- up onto there? And then-”

He turns around, and the mask is down, and Hood is staring at him, nonplussed. “Yeah, okay, I don’t really know, either. I- I'm not gonna panic about it though, I swear.” Hood laughs, easyfree and low, and Tim’s knees go a little weaker.

“There’s my boy. You really have no clue who you are, do ya?”

Tim shrugs. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel important. Well, now it doesn’t, anyways. But whoever I was, I'm pretty sure he was crazy.”

“And yet you’re the one on a rooftop, talkin’ about yourself in the third person. You know what they say about glass houses and stones.”

Tim elbows him. “Fuck off.”

Hood’s eyes go big and wide, mocking. “Tim! Did Brucie Wayne really raise you so _common_?” Tim lunges for him, the most comfortable he’s felt in months, and suddenly Hood’s hands are at his neck and under his arms and _fuck_ , he’s _tickling_. Tim resolves not to give in, not to beg for mercy, falling back and curling up as Hood’s hands chase him across the rooftop, his laugher ringing across the skyline, and oh fucking _god_ Hood was going to kill him what the _fuck_ -

“Uncle!” he wheezes, “oh my God, _dude._ ” Hood smirks at him, flushed and wholly unrepentant, dark hair falling in his face. Tim notices with a jolt the ugly bruise rearing across his cheekbone, pooled with old blood. Hood sees him looking, touches it self-consciously.

“Relax. Comes with the lifestyle. You should have seen the other guy, I swear.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “What did you do to the other guy?” Hood twists his mouth, sighs.

“Oh, back off, he’s fine. Dropped him off for the cops.” Tim stays quiet, decides he wants to hear this story. “Look, some of the girls gave me a tip, couple of days ago, a guy who always tries to take a bit more than he pays for, yeah? I just made sure he knew Gotham’s girls are protected. Batman won’t do it, or he won’t put his name to it, at least. Doesn’t work with his image, I guess. But those girls go through their fair share of shit already.”

“Okay,” Tim says, and he doesn’t think he can fault Hood, which is a little scary. “But what would the police do with him?”

Hood sits next to him, runs a hand through his hair. Tim knows they’re the same age, ish, but Hood still dwarfs him. It’s not a bad feeling. “There was… Kid, it isn’t pretty.” Tim looks at him, steady. “Alright. There was a girl in the room with him when I got there. Passed out, beaten half to hell by the looks of things. I called the police, told them to bring someone to take a look at her. Decided I couldn’t face much else tonight.”

Tim swallows hard, grounded by the sudden severity of it all. He wants to help Hood, doesn’t know how. He doesn’t want Hood to have to do this at all, but who else would’ve saved the girl? What he says is, “Sounds like you could use something to eat.”

“What, not something to drink?” Hood teases, but there’s no bite in it, and his tone of voice bizarrely reminds Tim of Damian.

“Dude. Do you even know how many of the drugs I'm on react badly with alcohol? ‘Cause I don’t, and I’m trying not to find out.” Red Hood looks affronted. “Where do vigilantes go too eat at-” he checks his watch- “half three in the morning, anyway?”

Hood grins. “Ever had a chillidog?”

Tim feels vaguely concerned, in a ‘that-doesn’t-sound-very-Alfred-approved’ kind of way. His hesitation must show on his face because Hood’s smile pulls wider. “More importantly, if I show you the way, are you gonna fall of the roof?”

Good question, actually. He rises, finds his legs aren’t shaking at all, so he stretches, luxuriously, aware of Hood’s eyes on him. “Only one way to find out,” he says. The Hood grabs his hand to pull himself up, presses something cool and plastic into it when he’s done. It’s a grappling gun. Excitement licks up Tim’s spine.

Hood saunters leisurely to the edge of the rooftop, springs halfway across the gap to the next building, uses his hook to make up the distance. He lands gracefully, twists to look at Tim, gleeful.

“Well, come on, then!” he yells, and Tim doesn’t hesitate to fly again.

They’ve only been dancing, leaping from height to height, for about five minutes when Hood shoots “alright, we better be careful, now,” across the gap between them, waits a split second for Tim to catch up- Tim doesn’t crash into him this time.

“Why?”

Hood’s smile glitters in the dull light. “We’re in the Bat’s playground now, birdie. Wouldn’t want him sweeping you off home.”

“You think he’d recognise me?” A snort.

“You’re only _Bruce Wayne’s son._ Besides, didn’t I?” He’s off again, leaving Tim to catch up, the adrenaline coiling in his body, setting the world alight. But they’re moving differently now, scanning the horizon, and the flashy jumps and flips and midair twists are gone. As a result it’s easier to catch Hood, ask him what he’s been wondering for a while.

“You and Batman… you don’t get on?” Hood has replaced his flimsy domino once again with the red mask, Tim realises. He thinks he recognises the silence that means Hood’s mouth is twisting in thought.

“Yeah, that might be a little bit of an understatement.” Hood rolls his shoulders, chasing some ache. “He doesn’t like my methods, and he doesn’t like that I know so much about him.” They move in silence for a few seconds. “And I don’t like _him_ because he’s a huge dick, and sometimes he beats the shit out of me.”

Tim’s eyes widen. “Jesus.”

Hood laughs. “I probably deserve it, kid, don’t freak out on me. I, uh, spent quite a lot of time trying to kill him, back in the day. We’re all good now though! Allll good.”

“Does he… does he know that? Does he know anything about you?”

“You kidding? Got to keep the old man on his toes _somehow_.”

Tim wants to ask _why_ , why Hood stopped, why literally anything was how it was. But as they clear another rooftop, a weirdly familiar silhouette in purple lands on a roof the other side of the street, and Hood grabs Tim by the scruff of his neck and _drops_ , pulling Tim down with him. For a few seconds Tim reels, confused by the sudden loss of momentum, the sudden ache in his legs, but he comes back to himself and stays very still, very small, until Hood resumes breathing normally and he assumes the danger had passed.

“That was… Batgirl? We’re hiding from Batgirl?” he asks, because he isn’t sure if Hood’s going to bring it up. Hood growls.

“I do not hide from Batgirl. She just couldn’t know that you were- oh my God.” Hood gets to his feet and Tim starts to laugh, first nervously and then all at once.

“Dude, you _panicked_. I mean, I can understand, it must’ve been very scary for you-”

“Shut up, oh my God,” Hood glowers, and Tim tries, he really does. “Look, we’re here, now do you want food or what?” Hood drops from the roof into the shadows of an alley and emerges, crossing the street. Tim snickered and scrambles after him. They seem to be heading to a little bar, dingey with no name or sign of any kind. At the door Hood stops to talk to a tired looking woman in scarily high heels, and as Tim catches up he hears:

“Won’t be bothering anyone anymore, I don’t think. Just wish I could’ve gotten to him sooner.”

“You’re a doll, Mr Hood. Your pal is gonna get ID’d, jus’ so you know. What is he, fourteen?”

“I'm nineteen,” Tim said grumpily, and then realises his mistake and looks even more embarrassed. The lady laughs, high and pleased, and ruffles his hair. Hood’s body language reminds Tim of a vaguely self-satisfied cat for a second. He strolls inside, and Tim is quick to follow.

The bar isn’t packed, but it’s weirdly _friendly_ , and everybody seems vaguely pleased to see Hood, more like he’s a stray coming in to be fed than any kind of vigilante protector, but Tim isn’t going to say that out loud. Nobody tries to ID him. Small mercies. Hood has his hood off again, gives the bartender a huge smile. She looks like she’s resisting the urge to pet him, gets to bringing him something without being asked or paid. Tim sits by him, a little confused but mostly just contented. He realises his limbs haven’t been giving him any trouble since he left the mansion, flexes every finger one at a time just because he _can_. Hood watches him, amused.

“Not trying to be nosy, kid, but for such an invalid, you seem pretty well.” It’s just enough of a compliment to burn pretty red into Tim’s cheeks, because he is weak and pathetic.

“Yeah,” Tim says, trying to figure out how to explain the mess that is his life, “it must seem weird to you. I'm kind of- up and down? Some days my brain doesn’t remember how to get me out of bed properly, and some days are like today? Most of my doctors think the pain and the unsteadiness is largely psychosomatic, but Bruce doesn’t like being told that because he thinks it makes me seem weak. It’s just a big mess.” He shrugs, aware that Hood is watching him intently.

“That’s pretty fucked up, Timmy. You know that?”

He smiles. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But- don’t laugh- everything seems better out here. Nothing really hurts, and who I used to be doesn’t seem to matter. You know?”

“Ok, you can’t say the world’s least relatable statement and follow it with ‘you know’. And I'm not trying to piss on your parade or anything, but you’ve known me for, like, two days. What’re you going to do if I don’t turn out to be everything you think I am, princess?”

Tim is saved answering when the bartender comes back with two plates and two cans of soda, answering Tim’s niggling ‘what-the-fuck-is-a-chillidog’ question. They aren’t actually that bad, although he doesn’t think Alfred would be impressed. He sees Hood wolf his down, sees the sheer joy on his face, so different from the boy who’d told him about the poor beaten girl earlier tonight, and finishes all his anyway.

When he’s down to the last dregs of his soda (grape), he answers Hood’s question.

“I'm not really that worried about it,” he says.

________

And it’s funny, cause he doesn’t need to be. Hood doesn’t let him down the next night, or the night after that, or the night after that.

They don’t see each other nightly. Tim is a _recovering invalid_ , Hood says, he needs _rest_. And Alfred already gets suspicious enough on the days Tim staggers downstairs with huge dark circles, orbiting the coffee machine like a tired, grumpy moon for hours at a time. Every night for weeks Hood stops by the warehouses at the docks, and at the nameless bar, and sometime they get lucky and sometimes they chase each other in circles. Eventually Tim just demands Hood gives him his phone number, and Hood really must be whipped, because he quietly agrees. There’s nothing intimidating about him there, in the light of an ice-cream bar, typing his details into Tim’s phone, and Tim thinks for the millionth time that this isn’t what a killer looks like, not at all.

He saves his contact as three eggplant emojis and Tim isn’t even _mad_.

The fifth time they meet, Hood throws a domino mask at Tim, says if Tim ever makes him hide from Batgirl again there’ll be hell to pay. Tim doesn’t feel like a different person wearing it, doesn’t feel like he’s meant to save the world. But sometimes he sees his reflection in passing windows and scores an intoxicating, private, thrill. It looks like a 19-year-old kid with no baggage, no brain trauma, with a whole city to explore.

He feels like he’s winning something, piece by piece, and sometimes he wakes up at night thinking of the Batman, of the rare times Hood speaks about him, terrified that everything he’s made will be taken from him and called _justice_.

And so months into their little night-time games, when Batman shows himself at the docks, ripping apart one of the new gangs Hood was halfway to infiltrating, Tim feels no shock, only cool dread. Everything else he’s ever known says Batman is the good guy, Batman is here to save Gotham, but Hood is so unprepared as to only be in his domino and he looks so _scared_.

They’re watching from a rooftop, because they’d been on their way to Hood’s bike when they’d heard the screaming from street level, and the laugh had died at Hood’s throat. He’s putting on his mask, now, and when he turns to Tim and says, “you should go,” Tim says, “we should both go.” He puts a hand on Hood’s arm and meets his eyes, gaze level. The city stills around them for a second.

They both go.

Hood takes him back to a safehouse, and it’s probably once of many, but Tim knows this one is The Safehouse, knows it’s what Hood considers home. The bed hasn’t been made, there’s open cereal out on the counter, the milk in the fridge is fresh. It’s so domestic Tim feels tears well, can’t help but think of another universe where this is the only Hood he knew, rooftops and alleyways be damned. Hood has disappeared through a door to presumably the bathroom (there’s a shower running) and it’s barely two. An early night for once, huh. By the time the sound of water cuts off Tim has flicked through channels on the shitty little TV until he finds some cartoons, and is slumped on the sofa, eyes illuminated in primary colours by the flickering screen. Hood smiles softly at the sight, when he walks in, and Tim notes absently it’s the least raw smile, the least crazy Tim can remember on him.

He notices the absence of the domino, even, of the armour, of the leather jacket, and the world seems to fall away. It’s just Hood, shuffling his feet in scraggy jogging bottoms and a hoodie, hair wet and eyes tired and gleaming, and the moment hangs precious in the air like nothing Tim’s ever known. He can’t think of what to do with it so he smiles, sleepily, and pats the sofa beside him. Hood comes, comes to him like gravity. Tim falls asleep on his shoulder and wakes up in his bed at the Manor and things are different, after that.

His family will have noticed a change in him from before then, Tim knows. He’s quieter now and less angry, he’s given up asking the awkward questions and listening at doors. It makes him happier, easier around them, which makes them happier and easier, too. Okay, _maybe_ except Damian. But there’s also a new distance, and a new sadness in Dick’s eyes which makes Tim think he’s noticed it too.

After the night, Tim goes over to Hood’s more often. Most likely Hood isn’t in, or is sleeping, so Tim picks the lock until Hood, badly pretending to be irritated, copies him a key. Bruce believes that he’s at the cinema or walking in the park or with new, _normal_ friends, or whatever, and the others either take him at his word or don’t, and it doesn’t affect him in the slightest. He finds it’s easier and easier to love them from farther away. Finds he doesn’t mind having a family, secrets or no.

When Hood’s not at the safehouse- it’s more of a safe-shitty-apartment, really- Tim messes with his laptop. Because the Manor wi-fi has a stupid number of filters, and besides, he thinks Alfred is probably tracking his phone usage- he’s turned location off, and then hacked the software enough that he thinks it’ll be impossible for anyone to turn it back on, probably.

Cause that’s the thing. Other Tim was a detective, but he was a hacker too. And while Tim feels vaguely cut off from the ability to puzzle things out, the hacking comes naturally, almost unconsciously. He breaks into three secure FBI databases before he gauges he’s probably ready to try it out closer to home.

He gets into the comm system inside Hood’s helmet on the second try, and almost sends Hood off a roof.

“Hi.”

“ _Jesus_ _fucking- motherfucker!”_

He raises an eyebrow he knows Hood can’t see. “That was dignified, dude.”

Hood splutters at him. “How the _fuck-_ ”

“Why do you have a comm in your helmet that you don’t want people to use?”

“ _Fuck,_ ” enunciates Hood, “I don’t know. Force of habit. _How_?”

“Apparently I'm really good at hacking? I don’t really question things anymore.”

Hood laughs, like it’s being ripped out of him, and then groans. “Birdie, I'm in the middle of some shit you might not wanna-”

There’re cameras on the sides of Hood’s head as well as at the eyes, so Tim sees the guy coming before Hood does. “On your left,” he says, watches Hood spring into action by switching perspective to a security cam across the street, wiping the footage as he goes. There’s four more, following the first guy up the fire escape, and he warns Hood about them, watches with some measure of satisfaction as he deals with them, capable and quick. He lets Hood get his breath back before asking, “who were those guys?”

Hood shakes his head. “You tell me, Timmy, being the tech guy. I tend to lose track of the guys lining up to get their asses handed to them. Hey, I wonder if I need to give you a code name?”

Tim is already moving to research the thugs before he considers the implications of what has been said. “You don’t mind me doing this?”

Hood sighs, weary but easygoing. “Naw, you almost miss having someone in your ear. But only occasionally, you hear me? Do you not have, like, school to get back to, eventually, anyways?”

Tim has been trying not to think about it. “Bruce says he’s gonna enrol me for the next academic year, so yeah, I guess. We’re just not really sure where I should- start?”

Hood, who’s perched on the edge of the building, legs dangling in a way that still sends worry crawling up Tim’s spine, makes a sympathetic noise. Tim wonders if he’s figured out the system, yet. Hood gave Tim a piece of himself- there used to be someone in a comm, for him, he hasn’t always worked alone- and so Hood gets something about Tim’s family, about how he’s doing. It’s a plan Tim’s quite proud of, but the list of things he doesn’t know about Hood is long and winding, and begins with his name.

Aloud, he only says, “even then, Hood. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Hood’s voice goes soft, and he says _I hope not._

And just like that Tim has a little bit more of a purpose, a little extra on the foundation of this thing he’s slowly beginning to call a life. The more of a person he becomes, the more he fleshes himself out, fills in his own cracks, the more memories drift back to him. Surprisingly, they’re mostly of Damian, Damian who’s barely changed at all since before the accident. Guess that makes a lot of things make sense. But sometimes he gets Dick or Steph, smiling in ways that are so familiar yet so different, and he has a few snippets of Bruce, even, looking at him with pride. There’s something that’s maybe even Hood, a smudge of red across from him on a rooftop, and _that’s_ terrifying for a whole multitude of reasons, but Tim remembers that proof is important, so he doesn’t ask about it, doesn’t disturb whatever he and Hood have.

The scariest parts are still what he doesn’t remember- the plot holes in his fucking life. For example: he and Hood are dancing rooftop to rooftop somewhere in the East End, unconsciously following an ingrained patrol route while tossing banter back and forth, light-hearted, effortless. They pause on the edge of an apartment building so Hood can light up, their feet dangling above open air. It’s around half three, maybe, and the city is still loud and raw around them. But between them there’s a little bubble of peace, permeated only by cigarette smoke. Hood is a little quieter, a little more introspective, and it gives Tim a chance to study the way his profile cuts against the grimy air, the shock of white at his forehead. Of course, the nature of peace in Gotham is to be broken, and so the muffled, aggressive voices curling upwards through the smog from the alley beneath them don’t come as much of a surprise. He squints into the darkness, sees what looks like some kind of drug deal. One side has a messenger bag, full to bursting with something unknown that leaves a chemical tang in the air. The other has a duffel full of money, and it’s a little like watching a movie as they toss it down. Both sides have about five guys each, street brawlers, real mean types. But only one side are pulling guns, like they know exactly how they’re going to use them.

And both sides- both look more than a little surprised to find the Red Hood dropping in on the middle of their little deal.

“ _Boys,_ ” he says, voice high with mock outrage, “throwing a party without me?”

The head of the first guy to move towards him makes a sickening crack when it’s tossed against a wall, and bedlam descends. Tim watches from above it all, oddly disconnected, as Hood takes both sides apart, piece by piece. He’s far from methodical; there’s a certain wild joy in his fighting, but this is _routine_. And so when the man who’d thrown the money struggles up from the pavement, dragging up his assault rifle, Tim’s brain doesn’t compute it for a second. Hood is at the other end of the alley, might not even see him before it’s too late, and the very real and present danger freezes up Tim’s brain, lets his body do the moving. He’s waist-deep in the fight before he even lets himself become aware of it, and the man with the assault rifle is smashed over the pavement, where Tim had landed on him. But he’s fully aware of his actions as he elbows the man who’s coming at him, shatters his nose, uses his own momentum to keep him travelling forward, and trips him, hard, into the cobblestones. He knows what he’s doing when he takes down the guy after that, and after that. And then it’s done. It’s just him and Red Hood, breathing heavy across a blood-soaked alleyway.

“Full of surprises, aren’t you?” Tim can’t read Hood, can’t tell if he’s actually surprised. Hell, Tim doesn’t know if he’s surprised himself.

Those are the scary parts. The parts where he remembers he’s squatting in someone else’s body, using someone else’s skills with someone else’s scars to show for it. And that someone is a stranger. But Tim is coping. He’s managing. He’s becoming something, someone.

And of course, the more whole Tim becomes, the more he notices all the gaps in Hood, and it makes him sad, sad deep deep down where he can’t find the answers even within himself.

Tim thinks maybe that the comm will help, that seeing Hood working will finally start to unravel everything about him, but only the third time he tries it out he realises that he was fairly devastatingly wrong. It’s half two when he plugs in his earphones, because Hood has cancelled their meeting at the bar. He’s got business he doesn’t want Tim wrapped up in, so Tim has figured he might as well try and be useful. There’s a mug of hot coffee beside him, and he’s wrapped up in Hood’s duvet. Because, you know, Hood doesn’t have to know. When he accesses the cameras, Hood is on his bike, speeding down a street Tim vaguely remembers. He’s set a noise alert for when he clocks in because he’s actively trying not to give Hood a heart attack, to let him focus, and so he doesn’t say hi, just lets Hood drive.

He hears Hood’s long, low sigh. “B’s been messing with my gangs again, Jesus. There’s a few shipments of something big headed in and I was _handling_ it, he knows I handle the shit down here, _Jesus_ we’ve fought over it enough!”

“What’s the damage?” Hood is only ever this worked up when it comes to Batman, and it hurts Tim to see him like this, instead of snarky and happy and a little manic, like patrol-Hood should be. Tim privately thinks that the Bat might do a lot less interfering if Hood ever briefed him on anything he got up to, like _ever_ , but he tries to trust Hood to know what he’s doing.

“They _were_ giving me a cut of every shipment for protection. They’d lead me straight to it for my share, I’d track it and handle it. B found out, destroyed the first two, is headed for the third one tonight, but we’ll never find the last one and he _knows it._ ”

“Deep breaths, Hood. Please don’t do anything stupid.” Hood’s teeth are grinding, and Tim barely knows him like this, not just angry but serious too.

“Naw, when have I ever, birdie? I'm gonna approach from the top, I think. If it’s not too late I might get the jump on him, make him listen.”

“Need me to check the roofs?”

“I can handle it.” Ouch. He takes a sip of coffee, then a longer drink, allowing his eyes to slide shut. He feels more at home in this apartment than maybe even in his bedroom, and if he’s lucky he can convince Hood to come home early, and then they can watch a movie, or he can make Hood get some sleep, or they could just… hang out. Like they aren’t crazy people who frequent rooftops.

“Uhhh… T?” Hood’s voice sounds vaguely panicked and Tim opens his eyes blearily. “I lied, I don’ know I can handle this.” Tim blinks at the screen and, oh okay. That’s Nightwing.

He knows what Nightwing looks like, in theory, recognises the blue and the black. But there’s something off about him now, and it sets Tim’s head spinning with the wrongness of it all. Apart from that, even as a mess of pixels on Tim’s screen, he looks _angry_. The laptop tells him that Hood’s heartbeat is quickening and Tim doesn’t blame him, his own breath is stuttering as they circle each other, graceful.

“Why can’t you ever just leave shit alone, Hood? The Batman is handling it, kid. Just fuck _off, please_.” Oh my God, that voice. The room is spinning around Tim, vaguely. He feels so distant from himself, the worst he’s felt since- shit, since leaving the Manor that first time.

“Me? _Leave shit alone?_ ” Hood’s voice is high with rage. He’s nothing like the boy Tim knows, assertive and confident and happy. He’s taller than Nightwing, broader too, but his voice is young and scared. _Who the fuck are you, Red Hood?_ “I had this handled! Nobody needs you here!”

“You were allowing the shipment of shit you don’t understand into this city, and profiting off it, too. Give _up_ , and go home.” Nightwing’s voice is ice where Hood is fire, and all Tim’s lines feel so blurred.

“You don’t have a fuckin’ clue,” Hood says, voice flat, and Tim winces because he knows what’s going to happen, watches Hood fling himself at Nightwing and get thrown to the floor. Hood must hear his tiny intake of breath because he sighs as he gets up, says, “T, doll, might be better if you turned the comm off for this bit.” Nightwing tilts his head.

“Made a friend?” and Tim hates him in this moment, wonders what the fuck is up with Gotham if this is their hero. _Abasht the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is_.

“I got friends,” mutters Hood, lands a punch that knocks Nightwing sideways, but doesn’t make him fall. Nightwing springs at him, does something that looks like it hurts too fast for Tim to follow, and then they’re both a confusing whirlwind of movement, and only the sounds of grunts and blows remain because Tim has his eyes screwed shut, halfway to passed out. When he pulls himself back Hood has flipped up the bottom of his mask to spit a mouthful of blood at Nightwing, the petty fucker, from where he’s collapsed at his feet. Nightwing looks less angry, more tired.

“We can’t let you fuck this one up for us, Hood. Bad things happen when you’re around. People get shot-” and all of a sudden Hood is brimming with anger all over again, up on his feet in Nightwing’s face with renewed, vicious energy.

“Fuck you, Night- _dick_. Not that it’s any of your fucking business but I actually haven’t shot anybody for _months_. Ask anyone but your precious Batman. I am handling things, you piece of shit, and I'm not going now ‘cause you _won_ but ‘cause I actually fucking know what the words _damage control_ mean, unlike every other mask in this fucking city. Fuck _off._ ”

Tim blinks, dazed. He thinks Hood might’ve managed to get through to Nightwing, get _somewhere_ , anyway. The man certainly doesn’t pursue Hood when he flips backwards off the building, lands next to his bike. He’s halfway home before Tim can find even the words to say “Jesus, Hood.”

“I… you shouldn’t have had to see that. It’s personal. It always fucking is, with him.”

Tim uses his go-to question for whenever Hood talks about Batman or any of his allies. “Does Nightwing know that?” The silence is confirmation enough. He lets it drag, not because it isn’t awkward, but because he really needs to think. “Hood?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re aware you have no fucking clue what damage control is, right?” and miracle of miracles, Hood is laughing.

“Maybe I do when you’re on the line, babybird.” 

When Hood comes back to him, he’s a fucking mess.

Tim has had enough time to think, finish his coffee, think some more. He doesn’t interrogate Hood when he limps in the door, doesn’t even speak. He drags Hood over to the sofa, peels off his mask and doesn’t wince at the split lip and the swollen jaw and all the black-ink, oil-slick bruises. He sighs once, sad and heavy, and starts to strip him down to his boxers, cataloguing the injuries as he goes. Hood looks at him so trusting it breaks his heart freshly- like a sinner, like a child. He shepherds Hood into the tiny bathroom, makes him stand under the shower spray until he’s worried about the hot water, steps in himself and uses the last of it to wash Hood’s hair. He brings in clean clothes and stands outside while Hood puts them on, then feeds him painkillers and water and pushes up Hood’s pant leg so he can clean and dress the horrible scrape there. Everything else will sort itself out, he hopes. He’s in so deep over his head that he thinks it might just work out, like he can maybe successfully bullshit the universe. He runs over his mental checklist three times before he lets himself gather Hood into his arms, and cry a little, but only a little.

They sit by each other, sides pressed together, for a little over an hour. Tim says, “you weren’t lying,” and Hood says, “hmm?”.

“You told Nightwing you didn’t kill anymore. You weren’t lying. I guess I didn’t get it, ‘cause… ‘cause I haven’t known you to do it since I met you.”

Hood is so soft against him, and he thinks he could stay here forever, probably. “Yeah, birdie. Since I met you.” Tim keeps quiet until he hears Hood’s breathing even out, and then carries him to the bed, tucks him in. He’s so terrified to leave, to shatter this twilight vigil. There’s a peace they only seem to attain in the quiet hours, when nothing’s real outside this apartment save the stars. But it’s late, later than Tim usually allows himself, and who knows what time Alfred wakes up at anyway. He starts the walk home, half-entranced, and every step away feels a bit like unravelling.

There’s too much to think about, answers and their inevitable conclusions churning in his mind. But the streets are so silent and so _pretty_ , somehow, and as Tim arrives at the Manor gate, still empty-headed, a pink dawn breaches the sky. He considers the possibility that this is probably what going into shock feels like. Wonders if he knows that from experience. He tries to chase the idea, follow his trauma down to the root, but just finds the same images again and again and again. Nightwing slamming Hood down to the roof; Hood spitting blood at his feet. Hood’s face when Tim had peeled off his mask, the way gore had matted into his white streak. As he pulls himself up to his bedroom window, slips inside, he decides he’ll give himself a night off from the knowing, from the deciding what to do next. His mind stays coolly blank.

Somewhere across the city Red Hood is sleeping peaceful, so Tim follows suit.

______

‘ _when the floodwater comes, it ain’t gonna be clear_

_it’s gonna look like mud.’_

______

Tim wakes up, room full of sunshine, and is aware of several things all at once.

The first two are the most pressing, and they go like this:

  * Dick Grayson is Nightwing.
  * Hence; Bruce Wayne is Batman.



Hence; _what the fuck_.

He lays there, eyes focused on a crack in the ceiling, considering. Not spies then, or ninjas either. Well, mostly. Okay. That means Damian is the Robin he’s heard so much about, which actually does make sense. If any twelve-year-old is spending their nights enacting vigilante justice, Damian is a pretty obvious candidate. He hopes to god Alfred isn’t prancing around in a mask, but the man is clearly involved. So: every night Tim goes to bed and the rest go to their secret base and spend the night fighting crime, in secret, for reasons.

Cool. Coolcoolcool.

And sometimes fighting crime looks like fighting Hood. The recollection makes Tim’s insides squirm. And he realises that’s what’s jarring here, that’s what sent him spiralling last night- Dick is so _good_ , and Nightwing is good as well, in an almost Biblical sense. He protects Gotham. Tim isn’t floundering at the way he acted last night- he isn’t stupid, he understands necessary violence- but his brain isn’t computing because it was aimed at _Hood_. Hood who isn’t a villain, who barely qualifies for antihero. Hood, who hasn’t killed anyone since Tim met him because it makes Tim sad. Hood, who under leather and muscle and boundless scarring is just a boy.

And Tim is the only one who knows that. So this whole thing- it’s all just miscommunication. In the sunlight everything is so easy and ridiculous it makes him want to cry.

He gets up, stumbles across the room to find his phone. The clock says 11:04, so Alfred has taken pity and let him sleep. Or they’re trying to keep him out of Dick’s way so he doesn’t notice all the fresh injuries. _Oh_. So much more makes sense, every second, and he feels the crushing layer of secrets start to peel away, freeing the air. He opens the texting app and finds Hood’s number.

_If you’re awake, you can take me to lunch. If not, I am turning up at your house. -T xx_

He considers waiting downstairs, but doesn’t know if his face will betray him if he sees any of them visibly injured. A growing part of him wants the details, wants to understand if it was Hood or Bats who was right last night, wants to know if either of them will track down the final shipment. The rest of him is content in the knowledge that the people he loves survived. He stays in his room, reads until his phone buzzes about two hours later.

_wait outside ill pick u up ;-P_

Is this your killer, Nightwing? Tim dresses, quickly, hurtles downstairs, shouts, “Meeting a friend for lunch!” Pretends he doesn’t hear Bruce ask, “who?” because it’s easier than slowing down to lie. By the time he’s reached the front gate it’s only a two-minute wait before he hears the purr of a motorcycle, before Hood skids to an expert halt in front of him, grinning.

He’s not in his hood _or_ domino, and his dark hair is whipping in the wind. Last night’s damage shows on his face, and it makes Tim wince, but mostly he sees a boy his age in colourful civilian clothes, gleeful and in his element. Tim smiles back, scrambles on, wraps his arms around Hood’s waist and doesn’t think about anything for a few minutes. The café they pull up at is unfamiliar, brightly decorated in red and white. They find a find a window booth, talk about nothing as they scan the menus and watch the city pass by. Everything is bright and optimistic in the sunshine, and Tim’s problems seem a million miles away.

“What can I get ya?” The waitress has a lovely dimpled smile.

“Hot chocolate for me, doll,” drawls Hood, and Tim’s too happy to feel even a slight press of jealousy at the nickname. He orders coffee, and then they get waffles to split, and Hood fills the silence with meaningless chatter as he waits for Tim to put his words together, say the piece he came to say. Tim can’t think of any flowery way to phrase it, so he gives up trying. Listens to Hood’s story about a car chase that really should worry him more, then takes a deep breath.

“I, uh. I think my dad is Batman.” Hood chokes on air.

The silence stretches as he stares at Tim, then suddenly begins to laugh. “Jesus, birdie, I- I'm not gonna lie, I did not see that one coming.”

“I… I really should’ve figured it out before now, but there’s been a lot going on, and…” He gestures helplessly. Hood is looking at him like he’s precious, eyes all crinkled up.

“Bruce Wayne, kid? Really?” and there’s barely a slide of mockery in his voice. “That’s a pretty hefty accusation. ‘Specially to someone you know has a few bones to pick with the guy.”

Tim smirks. “Nice try, but you’re really not intimidating. You told me yourself you haven’t tried to kill Batman in _ages_. Who else was I going to tell?”

“I don’t know, man, the guy himself?” Tim scrunches up his nose, thinking, suddenly horrified.

“Jesus, you’re right, I'm actually going to have to tell him I know at some point..?” Hood starts laughing again, loud and long, and ohmygod half the café is staring. Tim isn’t used to the attention and he flushes furiously, grabs his coffee and Hood’s arm, pulls him outside to the tiny enclosed courtyard. Hood is still cackling, obnoxious. His face is lit up by a tiny shaft of sunlight that’s found its way down here, despite the oppressive brick walls rising on all sides, and Tim’s heart does a tiny stutter. There’s a handful of chairs out here that look like they haven’t been touched in years and Tim collapses into one, overcome. Hood sits opposite. He’s pink in the face and pleased, and Tim deliberately doesn’t think about how their knees are brushing.

“When you do,” Hood begins slowly, “I'm gonna put the recording stuff from my hood in your jacket. If you take it out, we aren’t friends.” Tim rolls his eyes.

“Anybody would think you’re holding a grudge for some reason.”

“Anybody would think telling me might’ve been a stupid idea, then.”

“Hood,” he smirks, “you’re a dumbass.” Hood stares at him, blankly. “I'm telling you because you already know. I didn’t figure it out because of _them_ \- well, partly- but most of it was you.”

Hood blinks. “I, uh-”

“You called Nightwing ‘Night- _dick_ ’.”

“Yeah, but-”

“You get so angry at them, you tell me it’s _personal_ , even when they act like they don’t know you at all.”

“They don’t!”

“You instantly recognised me, a random teenager on your rooftop, who just happens to be family to your biggest rivals, then _adopted me_ , and at no point questioned the idea that I’ve clearly had combat training.”

Hood folds. “The, uh. The defendant is exercising his right to remain silent.”

Tim shakes his head. “Who the fuck are you, Red Hood?” Hood’s head drops to his chest, his mouth twisting, and Tim gives in. “Oh, stop looking so pitiful. You know I don’t care about your secrets. But… stuff has been drifting back, recently. Old memories. So, heads up, if there’s any chance I might remember something you want to tell me yourself…”

Hood catches his drift. “I’ll get my confession on, or something.” Tim relaxes. He’s said almost everything that needs to be said, today, and then they can get back to just Hood and Tim, planning to _insanely_ fuck with Tim’s family.

He stands, says, “But there’s still something you should know.” Hood looks instantly on edge again, his teeth worrying his bottom lip. “Even if… even if things were different, even if you’d never had anything to do with my family, I’d still be telling you this.” He steps closer to Hood, summons his courage. “I’d trust you with them, ‘cause I do trust you. I’d trust you with anything.”

It feels anticlimactic out in the open, so he figures _what the hell_ , prays he hasn’t misread this. Drops into Hood’s lap. Hood tenses against him, the long hard lines of him, and his eyes dart upwards to meet Tim’s, electric blue and searching. Tension hangs between them, caught up in the air like spun sugar, and Tim can see the redness of Hood’s lip where he was biting it. Wants, so badly. Wants to reach out and touch it.

“Babybird,” says Hood, voice rough like smoke, like sharkskin. “You don’t know me.”

“I’ll let you know when I give a fuck,” says Tim, desperate, and the neediness of his own voice, raw and open, shocks him. He’s terrified, terrified that Hood will see through all his bravado to the scared little boy underneath and push him off. Terrified that he’ll see through it and he _won’t_.

He doesn’t. And Tim is so, _so_ finished with waiting. He leans forward carefully, deliberately, presses a kiss into the very corner of Hood’s mouth, where there’s a minute scar. He goes to pull back and then one of Hood’s hands is at his waist, stopping him, and the other is in the soft hair at his neck, dragging him back in.

Their first real kiss is reverent, holy, and he’s laughing into the second one, high on joy, and it’s all too perfect for him to hold steady in his mind. He gives into it, lets the chaos swallow him whole. Hood kisses him and smiles into it like it’s a promise, like it’s a benediction. It’s softer and lighter than Tim ever could’ve pictured, if he’d ever dared to try, and they rise and sink with it like the tide.

Hood pulls back gently, pupils blown, looking at Tim like he’s something to be worshipped, like he’s hallowed ground. Tim is dizzy on top of it all, and he realises his hands are cupping Hood’s face. They’re wholly intertwined, but Tim finds a way to pull away, stand up, dash the hair from his eyes with a shaking hand.

“Um,” he says.

Hood chuckles, and it’s choked and throaty and Tim needs him like _oxygen_.

“Holy shit, babybird. You don’t hold back.”

Tim wants to kiss him again, wantswantswants, but instead he moves backwards until he finds his chair, sinks into it, takes a sip of coffee. ‘Cause that’s it. That, right there. The last box on his checklist.

“It was always that. From the start. That, or ‘birdie’. I never got it, Red. I might get it now.” Tim swallows, doesn’t know what answer he’s hoping for. “Was I Robin?”

Hood gives him a crooked smile, well-kissed and lazy in the sunlight.

“Yeah, Timmy. Far as I can figure- you were Robin.”

Tim grins right back, and the whole truth settles around him like wings, like birdsong, like things are going to be okay.

______

“Testing, testing, 1, 2-” Tim is standing outside of Bruce’s office, leaning against the wall, as Hood cuts him off. It’s nice- not to have to lean because your legs are numbing, failing you, or because you suddenly can’t feel your heart. Leaning because it’s a Sunday morning, because you settled for texting Hood and had an early night last night, because your whole life seems wide open in front of you.

“Receiving loud and clear. Still don’t get how you managed to get this thing working in the first place, but I ain’t complaining now.”

“I'm very clever,” Tim says drily, believes it too. He’s stalling, a little, because this is a conversation that needs to happen, but change is hanging balanced in the air around him, and it is a scary feeling.

“I know you are. I'm gonna turn off my mic- you don’ need me distracting you- but I'm rootin’ for you.” There’s a soft click, and Hood’s breathing cuts off. He isn’t alone, but it feels a little that way, and the door looms more ominous than ever. The camera is tiny, hidden at the drawstring of his Wonder Woman hoodie, with the mic attached. Batman would spot it, but Bruce won’t, because Bruce has been underestimating Tim. Things won’t stay that way for long.

He’s scared, but Robin can deal with that, and he was Robin, once upon a time. He knocks at the door and Bruce says “come in.” The man’s eyes light up when he sees Tim, who settles in the chair opposite the desk, enjoying the brief, unguarded flash of love.

“What can I do for you, Tim?” Well, now or never.

“Hey, B. Um, I- I'm here to apologise, I suppose.” He raises a hand, so Bruce won’t interject. “For a while I’ve been… off, I guess. Distant. I’ve been going through a bit, not knowing who I was, really. I thought if I could remember things would be okay, that you were all just waiting for me to remember. But you weren’t. You were trying to figure out who I am now, same as I was. But I think I know, now. So… yeah. I'm sorry.”

Bruce looks at him, still and quiet in the morning light. Tim had thought that that look meant pity, meant that Tim was fragile. But it didn’t. It meant that Bruce was letting himself be fragile, for Tim. For this whole family, love meant vulnerability. ‘Cause, you know, they were a little fucked up that way.

So: come on, Bruce. Cards on the table. Let’s tell the truth.

“Tim. You don’t… you don’t need to be sorry. I- we all try to be more open, to talk more, talk properly, but the truth is I was never any good at that stuff. I'm sorry, that you felt the need to have to go through this yourself. All of us- we’re here for you- whoever you want to be.”

Tim blinks. “I think that’s the most words I’ve heard you say in a row _ever_. And… you say ‘all’ but, like, even Damian?”

Bruce winces. “Damian loves you, Tim. He isn’t great with emotions, and he refuses to believe you’re not lost forever- he doesn’t want false hope. But he’s just coping, son. He’ll come around.”

Well. There’s some honesty; not the exact strain that Tim was hoping for. He gives Bruce another few seconds, but it’s not going to happen. Tim’s going to have to say it.

“I don’t… I don’t know that you get to poke at other people’s coping mechanisms, B. Given, you know, the, uh… dressing up like a bat and fighting crime?”

The casual amiability of the room turns to _ice_ ; Tim swears the temperature drops ten degrees. This contrasts immensely with Bruce’s strangled, casual ‘ _what_?” a few seconds too late. Tim allows his smile to stretch, lets Bruce know he’s got him. The confused mask lasts a good ten seconds before Tim’s raised eyebrow cracks it right open, and Bruce’s head drops into his hands.

“You know, this is the second time you’ve done this to me,” he informs Tim, voice muffled. “I think you really are trying to kill me. You- you remembered?”

“Nah,” says Tim, vindicated but suddenly weary too, “I'm just clever. You guys are so, so far from subtle. It’s hilarious.”

Bruce mutters something about his blood pressure.

Tim sighs. “But, B- why hide it from me? You say you trust me, you say you love me, and I _believe_ you, but… you must see how it looks?”

Bruce raises his head, meets his eyes. Speaks slowly. “I do see, Timothy. It’s- the choice to keep what we do a secret has been tearing us apart, especially Dick. It isn’t that we don’t trust you with it, but- doing what we do already took your whole life away from you. We weren’t ready to expose you to that again thoughtlessly. You could’ve- you could’ve just had a normal life.”

Whoops. Ah, well, Bruce- nice try.

Tim smiles sadly. “Guess a normal life was never going to be for me. But you’re saying being a vigilante- being Red Robin- it’s how I got hurt?” Yeah, he’s done his research. Found some grainy camera footage of himself fighting, a fight he doesn’t remember. He was pretty damn good.

Bruce nods. “Crowbar to the head from Joker, and then he injected you with something. We’ll probably never know exactly what he did, or why. It’s scary, but the best-case scenario-”

“He just did it for the hell of it, yeah.” There’s another silence between them, but it’s not uncomfortable.

“He’s back behind bars. He won’t hurt you again. But you deserve- look, Tim, if there’s anything I can do-?”

This part, he knows how to deal with.

“Sure, B. All I want- let me tell the others myself? And then, when I’ve thought about what I want to do, just respect it, yeah?” It hits him that the truth is out, that they’re both still standing, impossibly. No fighting, no yelling, not like when Dick and Bruce try and talk together, and shouts echo from behind closed doors.

Bruce looks vaguely concerned, more surprised. “If you say so, Tim. Anything you want.”

When Bruce’s door clicks shut behind him it takes Hood five more seconds to turn his mic back on. His breathing is a tad uneven, and Tim assumes he’s been laughing his fucking ass off as Tim has been struggling with his confession. Dick.

“I bet you enjoyed that, asshole,” he grumbles good-naturedly, moving towards his room where he won’t be overheard.

“What, you want me to lie about it? _Golden_ , babybird, his _face_ …”

Tim laughs despite himself. “Yeah, it was something, right? It’s gonna get better- I'm telling Damian next.”

“You’ve got a real mean streak, Timmy, anyone ever tell you that?”

“If they did, guess I managed to forget. That’s pretty sad for them.” Hood snorts.

“You still wanna meet tonight?”

“I’ve been in this house for like thirty-six hours now. If you cancel on me, I will _find_ you.”

Hood’s laughter carries him through the rest of the day.

______

By the time he escapes from the house, extra vigilant tonight, there’s rooftop pizza waiting for him, and it smells as good as always. Hood knows his order backwards by now and they eat sitting a stone’s throw from the Wayne Manor grounds- Tim didn’t want to wait, sleep already curling inside him. They’re slumped against each other companionably, and when Hood puts the box down Tim crawls into his lap and kisses him, perfectly content. Hood groans, fists a hand in his hair, pulls him so close Tim can’t feel anything except Hood, doesn’t want to.

They’re both only in dominos and the risk sends a thrill shivering down Tim’s spine, but the idea of Batman heading home early only to find his _son_ like this is a mood-killer, even if Tim suspects that maybe for Hood, it isn’t. Which: exhibitionist much? Anyway, they’re both tired, and so they kiss slow and easy until they’re sprawled out on the concrete, breathing each other’s air, and Hood picks Tim up and finds the bike, takes him _home_. Night air breezes gentle around his head as they take the roads back slow and meandering. It’s still a violent city, smells and tastes like smoke, but then, so does Hood. The sleepiness blurs Tim’s vision until the bright neon lights and streetlamps they soar past are just hazy colours, hanging in the air. Tim’s gotten to fall in love with this city twice, he supposes, and he still doesn’t understand why but that’s okay.

The safehouse is accumulating more of Tim’s things, recently: the nice branded coffee he bothers Hood into picking up; the mug Tim bought him that reads ‘world’s okayest crime lord’; his hoodies flung over every available surface. Tim is so close to sleep, so malleable, he barely notices when Hood practically pours him onto the couch, but he moans pathetically when Hood tries to pull away from him.

“Mmph.”

“Babybird, if we both fall asleep, you’re done for. We got a couple of hours, tops, okay?”

“Mmrrghh.”

“You’re killing me, here.”

Tim blinks up at him through the dark- neither of them bothered to turn the lights on. “Nobody’s killing anybody. Set an alarm, Red?” He makes his eyes big and wide and pathetic. “I just wanna wake up with you, just once?”

Hood stills, rubbed-raw all over with love, swears, does something to his phone. He collapses alongside Tim on the shitty couch, wraps himself around him, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his neck.

“You’re ruining me, kid. Sweartogod.”

Tim holds him as he slips into unconsciousness, safe and warm, and all is well.

Hood’s alarm wakes them at half four and Hood swears, Tim burrowing deeper into the couch, pressing further into him. There’s no Hood or Tim, just a mass of warmth and sleep, and Tim wants it forever, is barely prepared for the wave of wanting that knocks him back, crests and roars in his chest.

“I’ll tell them today, that I know,” he slurs, voice heavy with sleep. “And then I’ll be free all the time, for superhero business, and I can live here on your comms and make sure you don’t die, for _forever_.”

“Okay,” says Hood, dragging himself to his feet, pulling Tim with him. “Okay. But I don’t think you’re gonna get seeing me past them even if they are all impressed from your _detective skills_.” Tim hopes he can feel the eyeroll Tim can’t show him ‘cause he’s too busy pulling a hoodie over his head.

“I don’t mean tell them about _you,_ ” he sniffs, “it’s not like you’d let me anyway. Besides, imagine what it would do to Dick. He’d think I’ve been _corrupted_.”

Hood pauses, snorting. “ _Timmy, baby, it’s okay,”_ he mimics, voice high and feminine, “ _just show me where he touched you on the doll, alright? You’re safe now, my sweet summer ch-_ ow! Fuck-” he catches Tim’s arm as he goes to elbow him again, manoeuvres both of Tim’s wrists back against the sofa above his head, a grin catching at his lips. “Careful, birdie.”

“I hate you,” Tim says, shaking his head but smiling, too, “and I _meant_ that once I finish giving Bruce and the rest heart attacks, I’ll tell them I want to be Red Robin again and they’ll _get off my dick_. We won’t have to sneak around then, yeah?”

Hood is laughing. “I believe you."

_______

“You know what I'm saying, though, right?” he prods, pouring his coffee the next morning. He’s still so tired he can barely _see_ but Damian is always up for breakfast by seven and he’s not missing this chance for the fucking world. “Like, nobody _asked_ for him to be all broody on every street corner. This city just doesn’t need the Batman!”

Next to him, Damian is pretending to concentrate on his cereal, absolutely vibrating with rage.

“ _And,_ ” Tim continues, listening to the music that is Damian grinding his teeth together, “what’s up with that infant he drags around everywhere? Robin? It’s-”

“Master Timothy,” says Alfred from the doorway. Oh, fuck, Alfred. He’d forgotten. “The Batman and his allies give a lot to this city, and I'm certain a lot of its people respect them.” That’s definitely Alfred’s damage-control voice.

“Like, who’s ever been genuinely intimidated by _Robin_? The most threatening thing about him is having to tell your criminal buddies you got your teeth kicked in by a _pre-schooler-_ ”

Damian goes straight for his jugular. Oh, wow.

As the kid lunges for him his flailing arm knocks bowls of cereal and glasses of juice flying. Alfred makes a vaguely wounded noise, calm enough for Tim to think that this sort of scuffle was probably normal, once. Good. Damain knocks him backwards off the breakfast bar stool, clawing at his throat and _biting, holy shit_ , but Tim manages to twist midair so they don’t both land on him. Damian is up in an instant like colliding with a puddle of cereal on the cold tiles didn’t even register, which, fair enough, Tim’s blood is up, too. He beats his brother’s fisted hands back, shuffling backwards towards the table, trying not to laugh. Damian grabs a handful of his grey tshirt, flings him sidewards and _pounces_ , animalistic. Hood’s mic is muted again but Tim’s pretty sure the dick is laughing his head off. Damian’s face appears in his swimming vision, his hands moving to throttle Tim, but that’s Alfred’s hand on his shoulder, and it looks like Tim’s shit-eating grin is computing with him for the first time. His breathing stills, microscopically. His head cocks.

“You… you said those things on _purpose_. You know!” Tim’s smile spreads wider, freezes for a second when Damian’s eyes go soft all of a sudden. “Drake? Are you…” Shit. He kind of feels bad for the kid, now.

“Nah. I don’t remember, not really. I'm just smart that way.” He watches Damian’s eyes narrow again, harden. Huh. So Damian had cared about Other Tim, in his own messed-up way.

“Tt. It’s been nearly a year. Even without my memories, I would’ve figured things out in _days_.” Tim snorts a laugh.

“Sure thing, dude. Now get _off_.” Miracle of miracles, Damian does. He collects himself, brushes off his jacket, glances around at the devastated kitchen. He doesn’t bother offering Tim a hand up, but Tim doesn’t take it personally. Alfred clears his throat from the doorway, clearly unimpressed by this newest revelation.

“I hope you’re both planning on cleaning that up.” Damian glowers.

“Of course, Alfred,” Tim interjects before things turn sour. As he goes to pick up shards of porcelain, Damian moving to find something to mop up the coffee with, Hood’s mic clicks on in his ear. The fucker is wheezing, and Tim makes a disapproving noise under his breath. It is weird, what they’re doing. He thought he understood the urge to listen in on Tim’s conversation with Bruce, to see the mighty Batman, who’d apparently caused him so much pain, lose the upper hand for once. But Hood’s reactions feel vaguely _personal_ \- that word again. All his instincts say Hood _knows_ Tim’s family, his logic too, but that doesn’t make any sense, not really. Nobody should know their secret identities, but Hood clearly always has. Nobody should be able to relate to the way Tim feels about his family, and yet. And yet. It’s one of the biggest puzzles he has left and he turns it over and over in his mind. He’s fairly certain that Other Tim didn’t know Hood, either, although he thinks they might’ve fought, once. It’s all… it’s all a lot, and so much potential baggage is hard to reconcile with the reckless, no-strings Hood he knows. He thinks it over as familiar laughter rings in his ears.

They work together in silence until the kitchen is passable. Alfred has left them to it, probably to talk to Bruce about Tim.

“Does Father know?” Damian says out of nowhere, hands twisting in front of him.

“Yeah,” Tim responds, makes it light and easy, “but only since yesterday. Haven’t told Dick, yet. You could help me, if you want.”

Damian’s mouth curls up into a smile.

_____

When Dick walks into the kitchen, whistling, Tim and Damian are working on something, heads down at the table. It’s more peaceful than he’s ever seen them together, actually, and if there’s a certain element of plotting in the air he’s prepared to ignore it.

“What’cha doing?” he asks, interested, moving to the fridge and opening it.

“Drawing,” says Damian, disconnected.

“Well, what’re you drawing?”

Tim looks up from frowning at his masterpiece. “I didn’t know what to do, so Damian said I should just draw what I saw, so I drew Damian. Now I'm making it a family portrait, and he’s stealing my idea.” Dick hears the tell-tale sounds of somebody elbowing somebody else across a breakfast table, and it’s familiar in a jarring way. Like how they used to be, lifetimes ago. He selects a carton of juice from the fridge, goes for a glass to drink it from because he isn’t an _animal_.

Damian sniffs. “I just finished you; I'm doing Father next. You can see if you like.” He says it like it’s a rare gift, which is true enough. Dick nods and so Damian flips his drawing vertically, hands tensing at its edges, drawing the paper taut, like he’s preparing for rejection. On the paper Dick is flanked by pale pencil-sketches he’s assuming will become his family, but it’s hard to take his eyes off of the finished portrait of himself, central. The lines are clean, sharp and arcing, highlighted in blue and white. It looks smooth, composed. Drawing-him is only in a sweater and jeans but there’s something professional in the way Damian makes him look, like he’s got it all figured out. It’s so far from how Dick has been feeling for the past year, tiptoeing around Tim with zero idea what he’s doing, that it almost makes him want to laugh, but instead unbidden tears well in his eyes. At least his little brother still has faith in him.

He says, “it’s good, Dami,” thickly, and means it.

Damian makes a “tt” sound, but his eyes are bright and pleased.

The moment hangs in the air for a second, warm and bright, and then Tim says, “hey, I’ve finished you too! Wanna take a look?” in a voice that’s far too breezy. Maybe he doesn’t understand the emotions he just witnessed, and suddenly Dick feels overcome with pity for him, dropped in the middle of this fucked-up family the way he has been. Dick’ll be sure to say all good things about his drawing, even though historically, it’s the one thing Tim’s pretty reliably shitty at. It certainly doesn’t occur to him that the happy tone is a trap, until- until.

Tim flips up his paper, smiling widely. It’s a cartoon image of a guy with Dick’s hair, doing a peace sign. In the Nightwing suit. Behind him is what looks to be a pile of crooks, in balaclavas, with ‘@£&%!’ speech bubbles. Robin is perched on top of them like a gargoyle.

Dick spits out his mouthful of juice, choking to the sound of Tim’s obnoxious laughter Damian’s quiet snort. Oh, great, they’re _getting along._ Tim only comes to thump him on the back after about ten seconds, the bastard. His breathing calms and he straightens up to shoot Damian a wounded look, horrified.

“You told him? This was important!” His littlest brother cuts him off with a _look_ , although it’s ruined because his eyes are still sparkling a little. Dick hasn’t seen him unguardedly happy in- well, in too long, anyway.

“ _I_ didn’t say anything. I hear he’s supposed to be a detective, though. Maybe that had something to do with it?” Dick flails, internally, spinning to face Tim, trying to understand. Tim is leaning his hip against the counter, arms crossed, amused.

“Dude,” he says, “I'm nineteen. Exactly how long did you think you could keep the vigilante LARP-ing from me anyway?”

The look he’s levelling Dick seems slightly more accusing now, and Dick rubs the back of his neck.

“Ah, shit, Timmy, I know you’re not stupid. But I- I really did think we could give you a normal life, you know? I'm sorry for keeping stuff from you, but I can’t tell you I don’t still think it was the right choice.” He’s probably just digging himself a deeper hole. Oh, well.

But when Tim looks up at him from studying his fingernails, it’s surprisingly tender. “Yeah, Dick. I get it. It’s okay. But- I _know_ , now. So no more excuses to treat me like a kid, okay?”

Dick breathes out. “Yeah. Okay.” Tim lets him work through it for a second then turns abruptly, moving for the door. “Hey, we’re not finished! Where are you going?”

“Out!” Tim yells, the door shutting behind him. Dick gapes. He may not be a kid, but _shit_ , he is _such_ a fucking teenager.

He shares a look with Damian, who just smirks.

__________

_‘and it’s no big surprise, you turned out this way,_

_the spark in your eyes, the look on your face._

_I will not be late.’_

________

And things are _better_ , after that.

Hood’s bike is already pulled up outside by the time Tim makes it to the gates and they’re off without the needs for words, speeding down Gotham’s streets, more familiar to Tim by now than waking up in his own bed. Some days they head back down to the little nameless bar and accept the free good food and bad beer (Tim’s off his meds) until they can barely stagger to the door. Some days Hood will drop Tim off at the safehouse and go a’hunting, clearing up the docks one festering gang of scumbags at a time. Some days they both stay in, cooking together and watching absolute shit on TV when they’re done, full and content and chasing kisses.

It’s a way of being that Tim never could’ve believed himself capable of, twelve months ago. He lived a flat parade of a life, stepping in somebody else’s footprints. Other-Tim, so fucking clever, who would never stagger as he had under the weight of so many secrets, cool and efficient and loved. But this Tim is loved too. He’s coming to terms with the fact that Other-Tim isn’t a rival, or an expectation, or a ghost. He’s just somebody Tim used to be, somebody he feels that one day he’ll be again, or who’ll be him. The merger will be quick and painless and Tim won’t feel anymore whole, he’s whole already. But he’ll feel ready, ready to take responsibility for the life that belongs to both of them.

He knows these things when he’s joking with his family, when he’s held fast in Hood’s arms, when he’s tentatively relearning the rhythm of fighting, the brutal crunching sound that justice makes. For the first time he isn’t temporary. It makes sense, then, that his whole life would pick here and now to fall apart. There’s been a warm weight at his collarbones recently, the weight of having something worth fighting for, something to lose; and so loss comes knocking.

It’s about a month since he cleared the last of the secrets from Wayne Manor. He’s talked to Bruce about wanting to be Red Robin again, but it’s a more frustrating process than he’d anticipated. Bruce endures that Tim, after a year of being off duty, is nowhere near ready for active service. Tim can hardly _tell_ him about the occasions where he helps Hood clean up, adrenaline high, blood in his veins like a whipcrack. And so when he isn’t hanging around with Hood in whatever messes they manage to get themselves into, he’s in the Cave (the Batcave!!) training brutally. They let him man the comms now, too, until the early hours, and it’s so lovely and familiar but it takes up the stolen time he used to spend with Hood. They take what they can scavenge in the day, instead, and it’s an odd impasse. As his relationship with his family reverts to something that’s simultaneously detached and business-like (in the way vigilantes must assume in order to cope), alongside being loving, his relationship with Hood softens, now they only see each other in the daylight hours. It’s something so much closer to dating than he ever thought he’d get, not often a rooftop in sight. It sets him weak and tingling.

They’ve stayed out a little later tonight than is customary anymore, it’s past ten and darkness has blanketed the grounds of Wayne Manor when the motorcycle pulls up there. The dusk imbues the air with a sense of secrecy, of privacy, and so Tim allows Hood to bracket him against the wrought iron fence, kiss him hard, without even a thought to the inhabitants of the house behind him. He thinks that’s it, but suddenly Hood is backing away, clearing the fence in a running jump.

“Coming?” he smirks from the other side. The sight of his kiss-bitten lips wipes any retort from Tim’s throat, and he’s scrambling over to pull Hood flush against him again. He’s not as agile as he used to be, yet, not as agile as Hood, but one day. Oh, one day.

“Gonna walk me home?” he mumbles as they pull apart, separated by only a hair’s-breadth of night air. Bruce will be getting worried, a distant corner of his mind tells him, but Hood is emanating heat, it’s rolling off him in waves, making Tim’s thoughts slow and his body twitch.

“Maybe I wanna fuck you in your own bed for a change,” Hood growls, the native Gotham on his tongue making it thick and obscene. Tim is aware of how he must look, feral and flushed, biting back a whimper.

“Alfred might have something to say about that,” he makes himself say, mouth dry. Hood breathes a laugh against him and the heavy atmosphere dissolves, at least for now. Tim sags, braces himself for another night’s goodbye, but instead:

“Well, might as well walk you back, now I'm here,” Hood says, gruff, and Tim kisses him again, just the corner of his mouth, just ‘cause he can. Then he makes himself pull away, darting through the grounds, sticking to where he knows the cameras’ blind spots are. He can barely hear Hood’s tread behind him, but he trusts that it’s there. Hood has never betrayed that trust so far.

They reach the wall of the house, where Tim’s bedroom window hangs open, one floor up. He thinks for a second Hood will press him against the cold stone, say goodnight for _real,_ but instead the fucker flips up to Tim’s window ledge, _backwards_ , lands facing out towards the grounds. Smirking.

“Show off,” Tim mutters, loud enough that he knows Hood will hear, scrambles up the wall after him. He knows stone cold in the pit of his stomach that something is very wrong, even moments before he sees it, when for a second his vision is filled only with Hood’s grin, glinting down at him. He hasn’t even bothered with a domino tonight.

As Tim slips up onto his window ledge, registers what he’s seeing, his hand goes very tight around Hood’s wrist. Looking for comfort, or acting as a manacle. He’ll wonder later and hate himself because he doesn’t _know_ , just doesn’t know. Hood twists to see what he’s seeing, as far as Tim’s vice grip will allow, but Tim is barely aware of it. _This_ , this might be what going into shock feels like. Huh.

His family is in his bedroom. Bruce is on the bed, Dick perched on his desk, Alfred standing, Damian leaning against his wall. Their bodies are facing the door, slouched like they’ve maybe been waiting a while, but they’re all twisted to stare at him and Hood, eyes brimful of shock and something else, something Tim can’t quite get a handle on. Dick has a tray of cupcakes, Bruce some sort of banner, and Alfred has relinquished a handful of helium balloons. Tim wants to laugh, bizarrely, as they bob against the ceiling. So this is how his life ends.

Hood has gone very still and cold beside him. There’s no give in him at all.

Tim is pretty certain he has a measure of how much shit he’s about to be in.

Then Dick croaks out, “Jason?” and Tim realises he has no idea, none at all.

Jason. Oh. _Oh_.

Bruce stands. There’s something in his face like the world is falling downdowndown around him. Tim feels Hood’s- _Jason’s_ \- pulse thrum in his wrist.

“Tim,” he says, small. “Tim, let me go.”

Tim does. Nobody moves as he looks up, fearful like Tim’s never seen him, slips back into the night.

Tim’s clenched hand falls to his side.

Dick says, “Jason,” again, broken and helpless.

Alfred says, “Master Timothy?” There’s something ringing fast and high inside Tim’s ears. He realises he wants nothing more than to follow Hood back into the dark, where there are no ugly, brutal truths to deal with.

He breathes out, quick and shaky. “World’s second-greatest detective. Huh.”

The air hangs broken around them, slicing at his vocal chords.

Red Hood is Jason Todd. Jason Todd is dead.

Bruce resumes his aborted movement, crosses to the window. Stares out into the black empty.

Dick says, “That was Jason. You’ve been with Jason… this whole time?”

Tim swallows, unsure which bits are his truths to share. “I know him as Red Hood,” he says, perfectly clear, watches it ripple around the room, quiet and devastating. Fuck it. Hood has been lying to him, this whole time.

Except. Except he hasn’t, really. Tim had made it common knowledge that he didn’t care who Hood was. And he hadn’t. But- fuck. Fuck.

Damian says, “Red Hood who runs the docks. Red Hood the killer.” It smacks into Bruce like a freight train, his hands tightening on the sill by Tim’s feet.

“He’s not a killer,” Tim says, probably believes it, too. Everything is dizzy-blurred, unreal in the pale moonlight.

“He’s not Jason,” says Bruce. “Jason is dead.” Tim watches Dick flinch, feels bizarrely like an outsider, watching some private play. Jason was never his tragedy, after all.

“I think he is,” Tim says, dull. “Whenever he talked about you it always seemed personal. He knew stuff about you he shouldn’t have known.” Bruce looks at him, and there’s sadness there and anger too, but Tim isn’t scared.

Dick, clearly working around something in his mind, says, “All this time when you’ve been out, you’ve been… You and him. It was- fuck, it was you in his comm that night.”

Tim looks straight at him and doesn’t say anything. Wonders if Dick’s world is falling apart quite like how his is.

He says, “if I try and go after him, will you stop me?”

Bruce says, “yes.”

He continues, spouts some bullshit about how it could be dangerous magic, could be absolutely anyone impersonating a dead boy for any reason, shuts up when somebody snarls at him. Tim realises, belatedly, that it was him. He’s watching his own family buckle and fold under various stages of grief around him and he can’t bring himself to care, can only think of Jason.

“Get out, please,” he says, and says nothing else, and in a roundabout sort of fashion they do. He sits on the bed and watches numb as Bruce locks his bedroom window shut tight, as Alfred pats his head and leaves and a lock clicks as he shuts the door behind him.

He realises he has his hands fisted in the banner Bruce had been holding, waiting for Tim to come in through the door like anything at all in their lives is sane. It reads ‘ _days since last memory loss incident: 365_ ’ and ‘ _happy anniversary, Tim!’_ in Dick’s hand, but the little drawings around the text- Tim grumpy in a wheelchair, Tim in a hospital bed surrounded by family, Tim as Red Robin- those are Damian.

He curls around it and cries and cries and cries.

______

_‘with tears in my eyes in my eyes, I begged you to stay,_

_you said hey man, I love you, but no fucking way’_

______

Alfred opens his door again at eight in the morning. He clearly thinks Tim is asleep, because he allows himself a sad kind of lingering look, the kind Tim doesn’t see on Alfred much. He’s clearly been crying, and Alfred doesn’t cry, either. Tim’s world fragments under him a little more. Alfred leaves a mug of coffee behind him, and Tim drinks it all without tasting, thankful for the rush of energy it gives him even while physically and mentally he feels like this empty, hollow thing.

The padlock is still on his door. So: it wasn’t a dream, then. In the daylight it looks weak and flimsy and means nothing at all.

Tim looks, long and hard, at his open door. Beyond it, he can find Bruce and make him understand, can find Dick and try and understand himself, understand who Jason was, what that means for who he’s become. He could find Damian, the one other person in this house who never knew Jason Todd, who maybe understands a tiny bit already.

He snaps the lock off of his window like it’s nothing, throws himself out like he’s got no bones to break.

He makes it down to the road in record time, and there’s no bike waiting for him. Something tears ugly at the hollow in his chest. Whatever, he’s always been good at improvising. A few streets down, a raggedy motorcycle is parked, and he hotwires it faster than Hood could, than B could.

They’ll know he’s gone, if not now, then soon. If they come after him, ruin this, he’s going to tear out their fucking throats. He’s never felt this empty since before Hood and it’s terrifying. As he whips through the narrow streets he wonders if Jason has killed since last night, feels horror chill his blood.

Tim’s hand is shaking so much he can barely manage unlocking their apartment, and when he manages it Jason isn’t there. His laptop is gone, the message hanging in the empty air. _Leave me alone_.

He thinks of Jason saying, “you were Robin,” grinning contented, bathed in sunshine, and what it _means_ cuts through his ribcage. He sits on the sofa, just concentrating on holding himself together.

He waits for nine hours, thereabouts. The TV is on in the background, same shitty cartoons as always, but Tim can’t hear anything over the crashing waves in his mind. Time flows oddly about him, non-linear. As he waits, feeling worse than useless, worse than pathetic, he compiles a list of options in his mind:

  * Jason Todd has left Gotham; Tim will never see him again.
  * Jason is still here, but he believes Tim has betrayed him. If he ever does see Jason again, Jason will shoot him on sight.
  * Tim doesn’t know if he would just let it happen.
  * Maybe Jason will forgive him. Maybe he’ll actually talk to Bruce and the other bats, and they can figure things out.
  * Maybe Jason planted explosives in this safehouse before he left, and Tim is sitting on a bomb.



He swallows hard, thinks of his family. Of Alfred having to bury him. Of a grave next to Jason’s, redundant now, of course.

At some point he gets up and goes home. Or, at some point he gets up and goes to the place that should be his home, that used to be. Takes the slowest, most meandering route he can think of, half to put off looking his family in the eye, half because he’s hoping to see a flash of red and leather streak across the rooftops above him. When he finally passes through the manor gates it’s raining, and he’s soaked through. Alfred answers the door almost immediately, the stern lines of his face softening to see Tim standing, slumped, shoulders heavy. He pulls Tim into an embrace and Tim thinks he might sob, but he doesn’t. Bruce and Dick are inside, pacing in the foyer, and they look so relieved to see him it’s almost a happy moment. Tim wants to push past them, make for his room or maybe the roof, but Alfred’s hand is still firm on his shoulder.

“If you’ll wait just a tick, young sir, dinner is ready.”

“Okay,” Tim says, mouth very dry. Is this it? They’re just going to pretend that last night didn’t happen, that Tim hasn’t been hanging out with a murderer? A murderer who should be resting six feet under not too far from this house? He knows in the hours he’s been gone the others will have been relentlessly using the Batcave’s resources to their full extent, hunting every scrap of info on Hood, cursing themselves for not joining the dots earlier.

This is how they’ve known him: Red Hood has been a presence for years, Tim’s unusually compliant memory supplies, and although he entered the Gotham crime scene in an explosion of violence, getting into numerous fights with the team initially, he’s calmed down enough to slip almost entirely off the radar. He helps them on very rare occasions, and rigidly controls a lot of the problematic drug trade. Nothing sold to kids, the girls on his blocks are protected, and even if he kills, which Bruce can never excuse, he’s never hurt the innocent. Of course they’ve delivered him to the police before, but jail won’t hold him, and his absence was far worse for the city than whatever he got up to on the streets. These are the facts, cold and hard, on a computer screen, that his family will have been examining all day. But Hood isn’t cold, he’s fiery and irrational- they could never sum him up in statistics, and that’s why they haven’t found him. Why they won’t.

Tim, by contrast, _knows_ him, deep and intimate and messy, and they probably know this, too. Have probably pulled security footage of every time Tim and Jason ever met publicly- they know the timeline better than he does, by now. They’ll have seen the kissing and the fighting, stripping down all the layers of everything Tim has built, just like he was afraid of, and it still won’t be enough. ‘Cause Tim knew Hood, but he doesn’t know Jason. There’s not a soul alive who knows Jason.

All this runs through his head as he looks at Bruce and Dick, as they look at him, the foyer cold around them.

Bruce says, “you love him.”

Tim says, “yeah.”

They file into the dining room and eat in silence. Damian isn’t around, but Tim doesn’t have the energy to ask. When he gets up and leaves halfway through the meal, nobody calls after him.

Things around here will get better, he reflects, on the way up to his room. They’re a family, albeit an emotionally stunted one. Tim hiding things, the shock of Jason’s return- the pain will pass, even if some scars will never fade. It’s worse this way- the uncertainty, since they can’t be sure Jason is _Jason_ , even if it’s a fact to Tim. But Tim’s lived with uncertainty for almost a full year, on a molecular level, and he worked things out. They’ll be _fine_.

He might not be.

It’s just- so much of his recovery was founded on Hood. Somebody who knew _him_ , not the shadow of Other Tim hanging over his shoulders. Now that’s ripped away, the floor of Tim’s world missing from under him.

It isn’t late enough for any of Gotham’s usual nightlife to be out, but Tim finds he can’t stand this fucking mansion, these walls. He finds the domino Hood gifted him in the pocket of one of his hoodies, leaves through the unlocked window nobody’s bothered to fix since this morning. Usually walking Gotham is therapeutic, lets his busy mind drift away as he gets to where he needs to be. But now the city’s all threaded through with memories of Hood, places they’ve been together, silver and gleaming in the dusk. Course, there’s only one place that matters.

The slap of inky waves against rotted wood reverberates as Tim reaches the edge of the docks, pulls himself up onto the roof of the final abandoned warehouse in the row. Jason is waiting there for him, helmet in his lap as he looks distantly towards the edge of the water, captivated by some light Tim cannot see.

“Hey,” says Tim, feels very fragile, all of a sudden. He’s a pillar of ash and if Jason breathes too hard it might all be over, he might just be dust on the wind.

“Hey,” Jason replies, and his voice is a little different from how Tim remembers, on some fundamental scale.

“You didn’t turn up for family dinner. I think Bruce was kinda disappointed.” Tim figures _what the hell_ , makes his way over the roof and drops down next to Jason.

“Pfft. My disappointing Batman streak is on like two straight years, now. I'm not compromising that.”

“Alfred was disappointed too.” Jason groans, long and low. “They- you have to understand what they’re going through. They don’t know what to think. Nobody’s asking you to move back in, but if you could talk to them- talk to me?”

“What am I gonna say? How the fuck am I alive? I don’t _know_ , Tim. I don’t know how I'm here, only that it had something to do with the Al Ghuls, and I don’t know if I'm supposed to be what _they_ made me or what _Bruce_ made me or-” his voice cuts off in a strangled sob and Tim realises Jason has probably never talked to anybody about this before. He hears ‘Al Ghuls’ and _burns_ to ask what that means, but it’s not what Jason needs right now.

“Hey,” he says, makes it low and warm and comforting, prays for a miracle. “Looked to me like you were doing a pretty good job of just being yourself. I told you before- I don’t give a _fuck_ who you are. But right now, I'm worried about you. So forget figuring it out- please, let’s just go home?”

Jason looks at him, wild-eyed. “I can’t go back to the manor, birdie, you don’t understand- I saw, when I dropped you off, you were sleeping- _all_ my old shit is still there, where I left it, like a fucking _shrine_. I can’t do that for them, anymore, be that- I'm not that kid-”

Tim puts a hand over his mouth, gentle, and his babbling cuts off. “ _Jason_. I know. I get it. I really, really do. So let’s not go to the manor. Let’s go _home_.”

Jason seems to collapse a little, the frantic panic and tension he must’ve been running on for hours seeping away. Tim stands, offers him a hand. He takes it.

They go home.

Jason’s helmet is left sitting on the rusting metal, forgotten, eyeholes staring unseeing towards the scorched horizon.

______

‘ _and my nightmares will have nightmares every night,_

_oh, every night, every night.’_

________


	2. everything I own (you say I deserve it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Right,” Jay says, shutting his book on his chest, turning his head to stare at Tim, eyes earnest. “I shot Nightwing. I fought you, a little, and I’ve aimed at the demon wonder before.”  
> “Right,” Tim repeats, uncertain. Jason looks at him like he’s missing the point.  
> “Right. So you’re wrong. They don’t wanna be my family.”  
> Tim can’t help it; he laughs.  
> \-----  
> Jason Todd finds his family, all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back 'cause she couldn't be contented with this as a mere one shot????? ya bitch, that's who.  
>  quotes and title for this part come from the same album, this time the song 'Everything I Own'. check it out!! anyone who read the original, I really hope I've managed to do justice to your hopes with this extended version. newcomers: welcome!! please leave a comment if you enjoy!!
> 
> <3 <3 <3

Tim gets five days.

He never figured his peace would stretch this long, but he can’t help but mourn once it’s over, something curling heavy in his chest. These days haven’t been easy, not by a long shot, the air thick with tension and a scent like gunpowder, but they were _his_. His and Jason’s.

Jason hasn’t left the apartment, not since Tim had dragged him back there, that night at the warehouses everything felt so fragile, like he was choking on all the broken pieces. He just sits around, cooks for Tim, reads his books. Tim knows it must be driving him crazy- hell, Tim hasn’t been on patrol in long enough, too, he can feel it settled like an itch in his bones. But Jason doesn’t show it. He’s acting like nothing’s real outside their little apartment, like there aren’t big bad elephant-in-the-room type problems that make him cry out at night, shaking and stifled against a pillow.

It’s a far cry from healthy. Tim’s not stupid; he knows that- Tim isn’t healthy either. But they’ve been figuring it out, is all, figuring each other out again, and the progress is there, and now it’s being disturbed he feels so goddamned _scared_.

Two days ago, Jason had walked out the bedroom in his old uniform, jacket against his shoulders like a second skin. He’d looked at himself, reflected in the darkness of the window, eyes full of something unknowable. Tim had watched, half-asleep, stretched out on the couch. He’d felt so full of worry, felt like he should say something but fuck-knows-what. Everytime he pauses to think about how out of his depth he is, trying to piece Jason together, barely holding together himself, there’s a horrible feeling deep in his lungs like drowning; like they’re full of tar. He hadn’t let himself fall into it, hadn’t known what to say so had stood, pressed himself all up against Jason, mouth open against his neck until, in the window, Jason looked a tiny bit less lost. It’s a small victory. Probably.

“What’re you doing in that, Jay?” he’d asked, voice quiet.

Jason had closed his eyes, a hand going to his forehead, the other arm wrapping around Tim’s shoulders. Anchoring them together, in the midst of some storm Tim can’t see.

“Trying to- to figure stuff out, I guess,” he’d breathed out, heavy. “I'm not patrolling, not yet, I don’t wanna-”

“See any bats,” Tim had supplied. “I get it.”

There was something else that needed to be said, there. Something that meant _there’s no obligation for you to figure anything out, Jay. You don’t owe anything to anyone. You can be anyone you want to be, and there’s nothing the bats or anyone else can do to stop you, and I will always be here to support you, because I love you, and as somebody who loves you I need you to understand that you need more help than I can give you,_ but Tim couldn’t find the goddamn words.

Two days later he still hasn’t found them, and though things get just a little easier every day, as Jason winds down, he’s worried that time is up now, that he’ll leave again and Tim will never have been able to make him understand how precious he is. How loved.

Tim’s had five days, five days of quiet footsteps and slow, careful kisses, but the world’s caught up with him now.

As in: Nightwing is on his fire escape.

The door is locked; he’s been trying to dissuade Jason from smoking out there. It’s probably a lost cause. The first time he had brought it up, Jason had said ‘what’re they gonna do? Kill me?’ and his smile had been like broken glass, an ugly, ugly thing. They haven’t really talked about that, much, either: that Jason is a dead man walking. Tim wants to know, _burns_ to know, but if there’s one thing he’s capable of doing for Jason it’s respecting his boundaries; God knows the guy deserves it after everything.

And now Dick is here, let’s be honest, probably to trample all over that and then try and hug someone.

He moves into Dick’s line of sight so the fucker will stop tapping on their window. Jason is in the shower but he’s got the instincts and senses of something deadly. He’ll know someone is here, probably already knows who. But the rushing sound of running water doesn’t cut off. That’s reassuring. Tim thinks?

Dick brightens the second he sees Tim, and it makes Tim soft, for a moment, but he isn’t dissuaded. He comes up to the glass so Dick can read his lips and says ‘No.’

Dick blinks at him. He’s taken the domino off, which. Urgh.

“No.” It probably bears repeating.

Dick makes a helpless gesture, and _fuck_ , hello puppy eyes. Tim makes a noise that’s probably best classed as a growl and opens the window, freezes Dick in place with a look. Tim doesn’t put it past him to try and clamber through.

“Timmy,” Dick starts, then pauses. Thinking before he speaks, huh- miracles do occur. “Tim. I- I promise I'm not here to fuck things up.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. He can’t tell if it’s a promising start.

Dick twists his mouth. “I, uh- _we_ \- we don’t want to come storming in here and messing with stuff we don’t understand,” he says, a thin length of glass and politeness away from storming in here and messing with stuff he doesn’t understand.

“ _We_?” Tim says, flat. “Bruce said that?”

“Bruce- look, he didn’t argue when _I_ said it, okay?”

Tim looks at him some more. Without the domino he seems so terrifyingly young, not so much older than him and Jay after all. There’re bags under his eyes, and a crease at his forehead, like maybe he hasn’t been sleeping so well. It occurs to Tim for the first time that maybe Dick _has_ thought this through, maybe he really is trying to be careful.

Tim lets out a big breath. “If you’re not here to force your presence on Jason, what’re you here for?”

Dick looks at him, wounded. “Timmy, you’re my little brother too, yeah?”

Oh, _yeah_. Tim’s brain has possibly been running on preservative measures for a little too long. It’s hard to think of your own life, your own future, when there’s a dead boy curled up around you.

“I'm going to make you some tea,” he tells Dick. “You can drink it out there.”

“Alfred’s going to be very ashamed of how you treat your houseguests!” Dick calls after him, as he moves the short distance towards the tiny kitchen. The shower cuts off as Tim dumps teabags into mugs, methodically pours the hot water. He’s trying hard not to let the cracks show in front of Dick, to not give the man even a hint of how overwhelmed he is, but a chill of worry settles against his chest even so. It’s a small apartment; if Jason enters the kitchen they’ll see each other and Tim doesn’t know how that confrontation will work out. He’s so far past having contingency plans for any of this.

He passes Nightwing his mug, and the man curls his hand around it, introspective, not actually drinking. Tim does the mental equivalent of rolling his eyes. Ungrateful fucker.

“There,” he says, “tea. Alfred _would_ be happy.”

Dick smiles, and it’s a little tight but all too familiar. It’s also a relief, Tim finds, a smile so easy, so uncomplicated. He feels a little like he’s betraying Jason and it stabs at his gut.

“Yeah, well. He likes you better anyway. You make less of a mess and clean up after yourself, most days.”

Tim snorts. “I'm a fucking _delight_. If it’s any condolence, he probably prefers you to Damian.”

“Oh, _wow_ ,” says Dick, “so at least I'm not the least favourite child, right? Is that what you’re saying?”

Tim laughs, and it’s _easy_ , and he remembers for a flash that he’d begun to get his family back right before everything had slid away from him.

Dick’s laughing too, but then his eyes go glassy for a second, and he says, “but, uh. Don’t get cocky. I'm pretty sure Jason was always his favourite.”

The name hangs in the air between them, heavy like the sky falling. Tim smiles, sad. “Yeah, I believe you. You should go, Dick.”

Dick’s shoulders slump, a little, his voice resigned. “I just got here.”

When Tim doesn’t reply he puts the mug down, untouched, on the metal railing of the fire escape. Fixes his domino in place, slow and careful. Shoots a look backwards before diving into the dusky morning.

Tim waits, five beats, then lets the guard bleed out of his body. He slumps forward, pressing his forehead against the cold of the window. A weight shifts behind him.

“He’s right, you know,” Jason says from the doorway. “Alfred fucking loved me.” His tone is incidental, matter-of-fact, but when Tim turns to face him there’s something very fragile in the fractured light of his eyes.

“That so?” Tim smiles, tired, trying to force the fragility away with sheer willpower. “Anything to do with the fact that you’re the only one out of the four of us who could actually cook?”

Jason snorts, something looser in the set of his frame, leaning against the wall. “Couldn’t cook back then, babybird. I’d been on the streets for about four years, before they took me in- you think I knew which way ‘round a wok fucking went?”

“What, so it was just your charm?”

“Something like that.” Tim shuts the window, leaving Dick’s mug abandoned outside. He wanders back over to the kitchen area, pulling pathetically at cupboard doors and squinting at the contents. “And if you’re trying to flatter me into cooking, you really ain’t subtle.”

Tim makes big sad eyes at him, stomach growling convincingly even if his heart isn’t really in it. “Alfred would make me eggs.”

Jason looks stung. “First- that’s bullshit and you know it. Second- you shouldn’t have missed your chance to go crawling back to the manor with Dickieboy, then, should you?”

Tim frowns up at him, still a little sleep-hazed. It’s earlier than his previously-nocturnal schedule is used to, and Dick woke him up, goddamnit. “I don’t wanna go back to the manor, Jay, especially not for _eggs_. Especially when you’re right here…” He moves around the counter, plasters himself to Jason’s side, watches the pink spread across his cheeks, warm and alive. Jason’s arms go around him and he finds himself relaxing, despite everything. “Does it bother you?” he asks, unsure if he should just be biting his tongue.

“Nightwing being here?” Jason asks, voice a low rumble where Tim’s head is pressed against his throat. He makes Tim feel so _small_ , still, and what’s scarier is that Tim likes it. “I guess I saw it coming.”

Tim shakes his head. “Not an answer, Jay.”

“I don’t know, man. It’s weird- everything is weird. Like, a week ago, I didn’t have to deal with any of them, I was sorting things out for myself, and now- now Dick is making house calls and Bruce is gonna start sending fruit baskets? They all think I'm their Jason, the one that died, but,” he cuts off, leaning heavier against Tim.

“Yeah,” says Tim. “But a week ago you still had to deal with me. And I'm not going anywhere.”

He knows Jason is raising an eyebrow, above him, the same way he could tell even when Jason was wearing the hood. “Deal with you?” he queries, a smirk thick in his voice. “Is that what we’re callin’ it?” Tim pulls back, blushing.

This close it’s impossible not to be drawn into Jason, golden in the morning light. He’s warm and clean and bright, impossibly alive. Tim’s only noticed recently, but the poliosis at Jason’s forehead, his bright white shock of hair, spreads down and out. His eyelashes are the colour of lace, like they’ve been dusted with powdered sugar, and half of his left eyebrow stands out, alabaster. Moreover, there’s discolouration ashen across the skin of his face, even traces of heterochromia in his eyes, splashes of jade. Tim knows he didn’t look this way before his resurrection, and the knowledge that this is Tim’s Jason, Tim’s alone, is buoyant in his chest. He can’t help but take him in, flawed and barefoot in their kitchen, _theirs_ , and Tim can barely ride the surge of love that follows.

It must show in his face. Jason stops teasing, goes pink, moves to hide his face making eggs. Tim is so content it bubbles up inside of him, and he can’t stop _smiling_. He wonders at himself even minutes ago, missing his life at the manor. Okay, so there are bad days, so Jason is damaged in ways Tim can’t comprehend. So last night Tim stumbled upon a memory of Hood shooting at him, dark and furious, and sat up in a cold sweat. But he gets _this_. This is his.

So: it’s all okay. Everything is good. Tim Drake is fine.

His life doesn’t fall apart after five days, then. The scary part of that is now he has to figure out what he’s going to do next.

\-----

_‘just try to appreciate what you got, while you got it,_

_so if it ever goes away,_

_you can say you enjoyed it while it lasted.’_

\-----

It’s mid-afternoon, their little apartment brimming with light. Jason’s full length is stretched out on the sofa, only in boxers, immersed in a crumbling copy of ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’. Tim is in front of him, on the floor, mid-routine. He’s starting his sit-ups and his tiny huffs of breath are the only sound in the room. Sweat beads at his neck and drips down his forehead; all of a sudden he can feel Jason’s eyes on him.

“Do you think he’ll come back,” Jason says, flat. His fingers are gripping the embellished cover of his book just a little too hard; Tim’s eyes are drawn to the creases. He sits up.

“Dick? Yeah, probably, Jay. I mean, I can tell him to fuck off to hell, and maybe he’ll even listen, but it’s a temporary solution. Every measure to keep them away would be temporary.”

“Not every measure,” Jay mutters, and Tim shoots him a reproachful look.

“They’re my family. They can be yours too- I know that’s what they want. But everything is up to you.” Tim doesn’t know why Jason is talking about it. Their whole thing is _not_ talking about it; they’re _great_ at that. He makes a grumbling noise, as if he doesn’t know himself.

Tim’s almost ready to go back to his routine when Jason speaks again. “Left thigh, and the shoulder on the same side, but just a graze.”

“What,” he replies, unsteady with the non-sequitur.

“That’s where I shot Nightwing,” Jason says, cool and blank, not looking at him. Oh. Right. “I was aiming for the chest, both times- he’s too fast. I could never tell if any of my shots on B got through his armour, ‘cause he doesn’t let it show. But there was that bomb under his car.”

Recognition stirs in Tim’s mind, hazy. “No, wait- I remember, I think. He was- Christ, he was furious, when he found it. He was _scared_. Somebody had bypassed all his systems, just to send a message- ‘ _I could kill you if I wanted_ ’- but then never followed it up. It just hung over us.”

Jason looks pleased at the memory; always so fucking proud of Tim, it makes his heart beat weirdly. It quickly shifts to smugness- he’s still an _asshole_ , after all.

“Right,” he says, shutting his book on his chest, turning his head to stare at Tim, eyes earnest. “And I fought you, a little, and I’ve shot at the demon before.”

“Right,” Tim repeats, uncertain. Jason looks at him like he’s missing the point.

“Right.” He scratches at his hairline. “So you’re wrong. They don’t wanna be my _family.”_

Tim can’t help it; he laughs. “Jesus, Jay. Like you’d get out of it that easy.” Jason looks perturbed, and Tim doesn’t know how careful he needs to be, if this is going to upset him or not. “Look, before I found you, before we came here, they were looking as well. They were _ceaseless_. N doesn’t look like he’s getting enough sleep even now. They’re worried about you; they _miss_ you.”

Jason’s expression shifts to disbelief. “Nah, birdie. They were _concerned_ because you’ve been running around with a _murderer_. If they miss anyone, it’s a dead fifteen-year-old. It ain’t me.”

“Sure it is.”

Jason throws up his hands, frustrated. “I'm _not that kid-”_

“Jay, I know- I _promise_. You’re not the same as you were back then. But you’re not a brand-new person either. They loved you then, they love you now. That kind of stuff- it’s not conditional, yeah?”

Jason glowers. Tim thinks maybe the point is being missed a little on both sides. He goes back to his sit-ups. Time will tell, he guesses.

“Anyways, by the time they’re through with you, you’re going to _wish_ I was wrong.”

\-----

While Dick had been uninvited, at least his presence had been an _event_ , something to get Jason’s hackles raised, to cut through the heady tension, the pensive atmosphere shadowing their apartment. It’s not that Tim and Jason are uncomfortable in each other’s company, but there’s the weight of unspoken lifetimes between them, secrets that have always existed, but now feel real and raw, solidified.

It’s the kind of pressure that has Jason pacing room-to-room, picking up and discarding distraction after distraction. Tim, by contrast, is very still, buzzed by too much caffeine, gnawing at him from the inside. After watching Jason shoot an angsty glance towards his Red Hood uniform for perhaps the sixth time, he gives up.

“C’mon, Jay. Let’s go somewhere.”

Jason turns to him a little too fast. “I don’- what about-”

Tim forces down the urge to roll his eyes. “You know you’re being a little irrational, Jay? Batman isn’t waiting to drop down on us the second we leave the apartment. Let’s just be normal people for a bit, yeah?”

Jason bites his lip, looks like he’s struggling with a weight of excuses and arguments, but relents. “Okay, babybird, whatever you say.”

“Look, it’s not as if he doesn’t know where we live. There’s actually a _greater_ chance of running into him here-”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, you _win,_ already. Where do you wanna go?”

Tim twists his mouth, thinking. He genuinely hadn’t expected to get this far. “We always used to find somewhere, I guess. How about the bar?”

“Dude, it’s like eleven. Anyways, I was always over there. Odds are like fifty to one B will be sittin’ there holdin’ a newspaper with eyeholes cut out.”

Tim snorts, despite himself. “Alright, smart-ass. How about a library? You just finished ‘ _American Gods_ ’ for like the third time.”

Jason stretches, lean and catlike. “For the record, that was by choice and not ‘cause I'm out of books. Neil Gaiman is a fuckin’ _legend_ , which you’d _know,_ if the last book you read wasn’t, like, ‘ _The Very Hungry Caterpillar’-” ­_

“-hey, I read! Just ‘cause I'm not a _snob-_ ”

“-but whatever. Sounds cool, I'm down.”

Tim beams, bright and pleased. He could use the air too, to be honest. Although Jason isn’t wrong- Tim hasn’t been to a public library in- well, in ever. He takes a quick shower and blushes when he’s getting his things together and absentmindedly asks Jason how much money he’ll need to bring.

“Jeez, Timmy, you’re somethin’ _else_ ,” Jason is still going as they lock the door behind them. “I bet you never even got the _bus_ as a kid. I mean, hey, reasonable question- those old-fashioned _library butlers_ still get all snooty if you don’t _tip them your mortgage-_ ”

“ _Oh my god,_ please shut up,” he groans, trying to manoeuvre getting on Jay’s bike with his head still buried in his hands. Jason slips on in front of him, turns the key in the ignition, and it’s been a while since they’ve done this but, hey, she still purrs as beautiful as ever.

Naturally, it’s Gotham, and the joy is shattered the second they make it onto a street with like, actual people driving on it, but still. They’re vigilantes. They can handle mid-morning Gotham traffic.

“Mother _fucker_!” Tim screeches, two minutes in. “What the _fuck?_ Was that supposed to be a _MERGE_? Who the fuck raised you? Oh, yeah, buddy, I'm sure that’s _perfectly legal_ so long as your fucking _turn signal_ is on, sure glad you’re not being _UNSAFE!_ ”

“Tim, honey,” Jason says from in front, sounding very much like a man who is struggling to keep a straight face, “this ain’t the Batmobile. They can _hear_ you. Also- backseat road rage? That’s not a thing. Nobody gets that.”

“What?” Tim blinks. “It’s not _road rage_ , it’s just. Constructive criticism. And yeah, so what if they can hear me? I could take any one of those fuckers _while_ teaching them to drive a fucking _car-”_

“ _Tim_ ,” Jason says, again, laughing openly now but simultaneously sounding sort-of concerned. Tim grumbles himself into silence. The bike does cut through the traffic beautifully, a sharp gleam of black and red. Before he even knows it, they’re pulling up to the library, squat and brown and ugly like every public building in the city. It doesn’t seem to matter to Jason. For a second he just looks up at it, eyes wide with a peculiar melancholy. Then he shakes his head, steps off the bike, reaches a hand out to Tim with a grin that’s bright and glinting. Tim thinks maybe the library was a better idea than he’d known.

Tim ends up at the computers, obviously.

He’d _tried_. For a good hour he’d wandered up and down the aisles, picking out anything with an interesting cover. Everything he’d chosen is spread around him, now, open on seemingly random pages, but the book about sociopathy had referenced two _really interesting sounding studies_ , and then the one on dinosaurs hadn’t had any pictures and he sure as hell wasn’t going to learn about dinosaurs without knowing how badass they looked. Now he’s sort-of kind-of trying to read eight books at once, looking things up as he goes, and it turns out this doesn’t work nearly as well with literature as it does with his case files and Wayne Industries work.

He only becomes aware that Jason’s behind him once the prick starts laughing at him. Scowling, he twists in his seat only to see that Jay’s carrying a literal mountain of books. Tim squints at the titles.

“Is that… Dante’s Inferno? Jason _what the fuck_?”

Jason blushes, immediately on the defensive. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about? Also, y’know… it’s on-brand?”

Tim laughs hard enough that people start giving them dirty looks, so the day’s probably already a success. Jason’s other books are a lot less dramatic, as it turns out, although Tim’s beginning to think that’s probably because the guy’s already worked through all the pretentious bullshit. When he asks, Jason smirks. “Hey, I had a lot of free time back in the day, when I wasn’ fightin’ for my _life_. The League had a pretty decent collection.”

Tim’s eyebrows shoot up- _the_ _fucking League_. Of course, Jason would choose to let that slip now, when Tim can’t press him about it- not that he would anyway. He wants to know how Jason’s back more than anything, but Jay’s playing his cards close to his chest, and Tim can respect that. The guy trusts him enough to live with him. Tim’s not pushing anything.

\-----

They take their time, the public space refreshing in ways Tim didn’t realise he needed, and deep veins of red and gold cut the sky by the time they drive back, motorcycle creaking under the added weight of a metric _fuckton_ of books. Jason most likely has a problem, but it’s not the worst problem to have, under his circumstances, and Tim can’t refuse him.

Still, his arms are killing him once he has to drag half them up the tower block’s stairs. He’d like to submit that as his official excuse as to why he doesn’t immediately notice the blonde who’s invaded their fucking living room.

He moves past it, dumps the bags on the kitchen counter, and moves to stretch his aching limbs when a unsubtle cough echoes from behind him. The noise he makes is seven kinds of embarrassing, and he barely has time to recover from the initial shock, before he’s twisting to face her, assaulted by a barrage of memories.

Her blue eyes are narrowed at him, and there’s a guarded, twisting hurt there, the kind of hurt that stabs guilt into his chest even if he doesn’t quite know _why_. She’s shorter than him but her presence bubbles vast through the room, overwhelming in shades of muted anger. He knows instinctively the line of her shoulders, the curve of her mouth, the softness of her hair where his hands had curled into it, at the nape of her neck-

She hits him all at once, the shapes and sounds and form of her. In uniform, grinning at him from across a classroom, and in hooded purple, the same smile glinting from rooftops away. She resettles herself in his timestream, rethreads her influence through every part of him. Tim knows her as he knows himself. As he knows Jason.

“Hey, Steph,” he says, quiet, and her anger crumples.

“Hey, Tim.” Her voice is just like he remembers. “You look like shit.”

He blinks. “I'm doing okay. A lot of stuff is fuzzy.” Are those tears in her eyes? “I… I should’ve come to see you a while ago. I'm sorry.”

For a second he thinks she’s going to be furious, but she just smiles at him, wetly, says, “Get over here, you asshole,” so he does. The hug slots something back into place within him, something he didn’t know was missing.

“Fuck,” he says, oddly disconnected. “You’re my best friend.”

She looks at him accusingly, “Yeah, and fucking forget it again and I’ll break your- sorry. Wait. Rule Three was no threats. Oh my God, Tim, Bruce probably bugged me, help-”

He starts laughing, hugs her again, reality settling around him, and she’s laughing too. Sometimes thinking about the magnitude of life that was taken from him, by one syringe from Joker, it overwhelms him. But he’s so thankful to have her, now, pieces of flat memory bursting into vibrant life around them, that it doesn’t seem to matter.

They’re still pressed together, more leaning on each other than anything else, when Jason walks back in, carrying the second load of books effortlessly. If he’s shocked, unsettled, he doesn’t show it, instead slouching against a wall, amused. He whistles, low.

“Oh, damn, am I interrupting?”

Steph turns to face him, coolly. “Maybe you are, Red Hood.” Oh, he loves her. Loves both of them so much it’s a little like floodwater, all around him. He has a sudden flash of recent memory, back when he first met Hood, of hiding silent-still, pressed down against a rooftop from Batgirl- _Steph_ \- and feels a bizarre urge to laugh.

Jason lazily lifts an eyebrow. “In my very own _secret_ safehouse? Well, they say nothing’s sacred.”

She looks him directly in the face, blankly, and _oh,_ this could probably end badly. “I guess it ain’t. Feel free to take your pretty red ass anywhere else for an hour or two.” Her voice is suddenly all native Gotham and challenge.

Which. _Oh_. Tim has a _type_.

Jason smirks. “Timmy, she thinks I'm _pretty_. Oh, go ahead. Enjoy your little powwow.” He uncurls from the wall, dragging the books with him through to the kitchen. Pauses. “Hey, will you be wanting snacks? Cocktails?”

Steph’s grin is wicked. “Oh, we’re keeping this one.”

Tim gets the feeling he’s possibly created a monster. He’s also fully aware his protests will do him no good. He slumps back against the sofa, rubbing his eyes.

“If we get drunk,” he points out, quite reasonably, he feels, “and you’re still mad at me. I will cry. You know this.”

“Maybe that’s the justice I'm looking for.” Oh, he’s fucked.

“Doesn’t sound very bat-approved.  You said he sent you?”

She snorts. “More like he knew he couldn’t _stop me_. He gave me about twenty rules. Notably, no coming onto you and **NO MENTIONING THAT JASON’S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD**!” Tim buries his head in his hands.

“ **I’ll show you how dead feels in a second, Brown!** ”

“Wait- B’s cockblocking me?” he demands, then immediately turns bright red. Steph cackles at him. It’s so familiar it’s terrifying, after only a few minutes. She wiggles her eyebrows.

“B seems to be under the impression that you’re already _getting it_ , which-”

“-Oh my God, Bruce has literally never said those words in that order, but thanks for _traumatising me-”_

“-hey, I'm just wonderin’, how come you got _more game_ as an _amnesiac_? That doesn’t add up right, huh, _Timothy_.”

Tim rubs his eyes. “You’re just jealous of my natural charm,” he says drily.

“My working theory is that you’re fedora-less for the first time in your life-”

“Okay, too far, I have _never_ owned a fedora.”

“How would you know? You have amnesia.”

“We dated for like two years. I remember _that_. It’s your standards I'm trusting.”

Steph shrugs, eyes flashing with mischief. “I do enjoy doing my bit for charity-”

Jason’s laugh echoes in from the kitchen.

\-----

_‘sometimes you get sad when we're together_

_because you're not sure if you'll miss me when I'm gone.’_

\-----

It’s cold out here, some kind of hellish Gotham speciality that could generously be described as snow dropping around him. Behind him the apartment is a warm glow, echoed through with old beginnings. He’s almost envious of what Tim and Steph get, now, this seamless reunion. Nothing Jason’s ever lost has come back that easy.

Not much he’s ever lost has come back at all.

He stands on the fire escape and smokes, five back-to-back until his fingers are stained and the world seems quieter. Dick was here, barely any time ago, inhabiting the same space. Rationally, Jason knows it was for Tim, knows just how well he’s driven his family away, but the evening is already too awash with sentiment to keep away thoughts of forgiveness, of belonging.

That’s not even- he doesn’t even _want_ that. He was in Bruce’s presence unguarded for ten seconds and it made him feel all of eleven years old, again, cold and hungry and feral, staring up at this myth in black and grey. The phantom itch of Bruce’s gloved hand against his shoulder. The illusion of warmth in his chest, sparked back when someone had _cared_ , cared unconditionally for the first time.

Bruce had said ‘Jason’, almost the same way he’d always used to. But there’d been new cracks in it, this time, edges like grief. The kind of tenderness that could almost come off real, unfettered, if Jason let it. But Bruce has _never_ been unconditional, right down to the bones of him. There’re rules everywhere he is, boundaries and constraints that Jason has ripped to shreds, again and again and again.

It just _hurts_ , is all. Deep down where Jason didn’t think the Pit had left him any heart to break. There’s everything that used to love him, a world that bent tender to the bite of his lip, the duck of his head, to every desperate plea. That Jason never realised how lucky he was, how much was out there waiting. This Jason’s edges fit ugly into the gaps of his old world, too much anger, things that maybe were best left six feet under.

And even the little mercy he’s been able to carve out of this city- Jason knows he will have to lose this too, cold certainty settled in his lungs. He’d tried, that night, to break away, but he was so _weak_ , love-starved, and, well. It was hard to stand the thought of Tim wandering the city, searching. Alone. He knows it’ll only cut deeper when he does go, but Tim will have to understand, right? The kid’s not blind. Jason is- Jason is _corrosive_ , acidic, burning away anything in range. He’s doing everyone a favour. Just ‘cause it’s cliché doesn’t mean it ain’t true. He’s still lying to Tim, after everything. Still hasn’t summoned the fucking courage to tell him the one thing he needs to know, and it sickens Jason to his insides.

‘Course, some people are stupid enough to stick around, not like his family. Some people Jason doesn’t have to worry about breaking. He’s been meaning to make this phone call for a few days, actually, and his thoughts are slick enough with nicotine that it’ll be easy.

The tone rings three times, abrasive against the snow-strewn night air. A voice answers, muddy with something that could be sleep, but isn’t, and sour worry curls in Jason’s gut.

“Heeeey, Jaybird. Was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

“Believe me, I’ve tried. You… you doin’ okay?”

“Sure.” Jason lets the silence stretch. “Okay, dude, it’s only weed. Loosen up.”

He makes an abstract, groaning noise into the phone, unable to find the right words to say _that’s not really okay, buddy, but I'm proud of you anyway, and besides it’s my fault for being a shitty friend and not calling earlier_. A couple out on their fire escape two doors over shoot him an odd look.

“Aw, love you too, _Dad_. What’s up? It’s been radio silence for at least a week.”

“It’s complicated. Stop tryin’ to change the subject- are you good? And you could always try callin’ me first, for a change, y’know.”

“Ooh, _complicated_. And, see, the problem with that is I _know_ you’ll pick up. Like, no matter what you’re doing. I’ve heard wayyy too many bones breaking- you owe me so much for therapy. Luckily, I take cash and credit.”

Jason needs to get him to talk serious, needs to know if he actually needs to be picked up. But it’s the easiest conversation he’s had since- since the last call, really. “I actually have a gift card?”

“For therapy? The new boyfriend getting pushy, huh?”

Jason huffs out his breath. “ _Roy_.”

“…Yeah?”

“Are you _good_? Cause you’re on _somethin’_ , and I'm right by my bike, I could come get you-“

“-Jay. It’s cool. You got your own shit-“

“-Roy.”

“Okay, listen, I know what I’m doing, I jus’ needed things to stop mattering for a bit, you don’t need to be my _fuckin’ mother_ , Christ-“

“ _-Harper._ ”

Jason can almost see him, the way his shoulders will be slumping, in the corner of some room that’s too bright, too hot, too heavy.

“Yeah, okay, Jay. Come get me?”

“Anytime, kid.”

“… Don’t hang up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighs, peeling himself off the wall and crushing his smoke underneath a heel. “’M not entirely stupid, dude.”

Steph and Tim both look up when he re-enters the kitchen, surprise registering at Roy’s chatter on the phone. Whatever. Just ‘cause he’s never _mentioned_ having friends.

“I got errands to run,” he says, “don’t wait up.”

Steph, a little blurry around the edges, seems satisfied with the explanation. Tim is faring much worse- Jason knows from experience he’s a complete lightweight, and it’s visible in the pink blush staining his cheeks as he makes a confused face.

“But- I thought- you weren’t gonna leave, right?” His voice slurs pretty across the words, and Jason’s too busy melting a little to register that Roy has very much heard as well.

“Ooh, Jaybird, that him? Wait, what does he mean, you’re not leaving? Leaving where?”

Tim looks even more puzzled, his face scrunched up like when he’s been at the case files on Jason’s laptop for hours and his edges are starting to fray. Steph rubs a hand across her forehead, Batgirl instincts slowly grinding into life.

“Wait, who’s that guy? I swear I know-”

“Jay, who’s this? How many new friends have you been making, anyhow?”

Oh, wow. Jason had almost forgotten how fun it was, being the only sober guy in a room. He pushes his hair back from his face and heads for the door.

“Errands!” he repeats. “Don’t wait up!”

Roy leaves him in peace for the minutes it takes to ease his bike purring into life, bring up the map with a beeping, red tracker on it. It’s nothing creepy- Roy has one on him, too, he can feel its cool metal on a chain around his neck, even now. They’re both just fucked up enough, they both crashed together hard enough, that they’ll trust each other with just about anything, and that’s why this job is Jason’s, here and now.

As Jason picks up speed, Roy drawls, “spill.”

He sighs, weaving in and out of the late-night traffic without sparing a glance. “The boy you heard was Tim. The girl was his ex. Y’know, _Batgirl_.” Roy whistles, sharp. “Oh, shut it, it’s not like that. I think.”

“Cool, I believe you,” lazy through the phone speaker, but the hint of a slur makes worry coil, unconsciously speeding up the bike. “But what’re they doing at your safehouse? She’s a bat, right? And you didn’t sound like you were wearing your helmet.”

For a second he’s convinced he’s being chastised for road safety, crazy when Roy is eight kinds of fucked up on the other end of the line. Then it clicks that Roy means the Red Hood mask, to hide his identity, and realises he has a story to tell.

What comes out is, “you were tracking me?”

“I was bored. This party is boring. What’s up?”

One of the best parts of talking to Roy is quite often they don’t need to explicitly state what they’re feeling, not with each other. It means Roy can probably understand the bit of Jason that’s screaming _if the party is so shit then why did you fucking go?_

“Shit’s gone down, Harper. It’s why I didn’t call last week, I'm sorry. Things are just real fucked up and I don’ know what I'm doing.” He feels his voice get quiet, taper off, hates the weakness it condemns him with.

Roy hisses a breath. “Shit, naw, Jaybird, I'm sorry. I should’ve been there for you. Shit’s gone down… with the Bats?”

Jason can’t help the break in his voice, the ache at his throat, like he’s being choked by the whipping night air. “B knows. They all know, and it’s _fucked up_ , ‘cause they all miss how I _was_ but they’re stuck with how I _am_ , and they fucking _hate me_ , and I was around them for all of ten seconds and I still couldn’t fucking breathe-”

“Hey, hey, shh.” Roy’s voice grounds him, keeps his eyes steady on the road, although tears are welling. “Are you overreacting? ‘Cause from over here it sounds a lot like you’re overreacting. They won’t hate you. And anyway, fuck what the Bats think, yeah?”

He snorts, still shaky. “Sure. Apart from Tim.”

“You’re whipped, Todd. Whipped. So what’s up with that? He’s moved in, now?”

Talking about it is bizarrely helpful. Even thinking events through enough to speak them aloud orders something tired and messy in Jason’s head. “Yeah. I kinda- flipped out? When they found out. He chased me down and took me back to the safehouse and- we’re looking after each other, I guess. But his family won’t want him around me- Dickface turned up to check on him and now Steph- and- it’s just a mess?”

Roy sighs heavy, right into the microphone so it blasts loud static out of Jason’s speakers. He doesn’t make any attempt to solve Jason’s problems, to relate to them- it’s not what Roy’s about and it’s not what Jason needs. Instead he offers compassionate silence, for a few moments, until the tracker beeps. Jason clears his throat. “I'm a minute out. Sorry. We’ll get you home safe, soon.”

“Don’t apologise, Jaybird. What friends are for, right? Hey, it’s no consolation, but you’ll always have me, dude. Unless tonight kills me. I think it might be killing me.”

Jason groans. “If you’re being nice to me ‘cause you threw up and you expect me to clean it, on God-”

“Ah, you love me really.” Jay scowls and hangs up as he pulls up outside the club- it’s dingey and dark, traces of neon leaking from the windows. Exactly the kind of place for a kid like Roy to fall all the way off the wagon, but. Jason’s here now. Things’ll be fine. They have to be.

None of the bouncers try and get in his face, which, thank heaven for small mercies. He orders a beer from the nice bartender in the ripped fishnets, because there’s no fucking way he’s getting through tonight without some kind of buzz. Maybe that’s how Roy felt. When it comes, he takes a long draught, grateful for the chill of the glass bottle in the sweat-slick air, and goes searching.

Everything is far too loud, searing in hot pinks and lime greens and cobalt under the furious strobe lights. The crashing beat of the music makes thinking hard, and he searches the back rooms in a sort of trance. Comes across more people fucking than he needed to see, tonight, to be honest, but they’re all off their faces on whatever and they seem to care about the intrusion far less than he does.

When he finds Roy he’s being pressed against the wall by a guy in leather who looks like he doesn’t quite know whether he wants to fuck the kid or smash his face in. Jason actually spent a while feeling just that way about Arsenal, so he sympathises. Sympathises even more as he watches Roy- pupils blown, twitching in a way that can’t possibly be healthy- silently relieve the guy of his phone, his wallet, his headphones, in the guise of feeling him up. Even shitfaced, he’s an artisan at what he does, and it’s almost a shame to interrupt.

He clears his throat. “Harper,” he says, warning, puts an inflection of threat into it. Both heads snap to him. Damn, still got it.

The leather guy looks guilty. “You didn’t say you had a _man_.”

Roy snorts. “Oh, he _wishes_. That’s just my driver.” Jason wants to be mad, wants to let Roy come grumbling after him, but instead he’s hyperfocused on the chemical tang in the air, the twitch at his eye, the slump of his body as he breathes through whatever he’s done to himself this time.

“Roy,” he says, makes it worried, mournful, sorry, all the other thousand things that he’s feeling, and leather guy steps away like he’s been burnt. Roy meets his eyes for the first time and it’s like all the cracks spiralling through him are backlit, burning visible and fragile for the whole room to see.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, and follows Jason out. He remembers to be grateful that Roy’s not covered in his own sick, and gives the kid a motorcycle helmet since there’s a considerable chance that whatever he’s taken could cut off the use of his limbs any second now. They clamber onto the bike and Roy leans forward, plastered hot and heavy against the back of him. Jason can’t be angry. He thinks of Tim, remembers coaxing him into movement on the days his psychosomatic pain got particularly bad, rewarding him with little open-mouthed kisses, and thinks, _who in the hell is trusting me to take care of these people_.

The answer’s nobody, of course. Jason’s here for them because no one else was really cutting it- he thinks of Oliver Queen in his place, of Batman, and shudders. ‘Cause really, look at him- he’s a _last_ last resort kinda guy.

“Hey,” he grunts, bringing the bike to life beneath them, “careful not to fall asleep, yeah? You said you’d only had some weed? Buddy, this is important.”

Roy sighs into his shoulder. “-nly joints, yeah. All other people’s- dunno what was in ‘em. Bad idea, I know.”

“You’re a dumbass,” he says, tired and fond, and they accelerate into the night.

\-----

_‘and we’re both into letting this develop,_

_but the thought of starting over always sounded much better.’_

\-----

Around Tim, everything is awful fuzzy. The room blurs when he stops focusing on it, and his eyes slip shut without him meaning them to, if he isn’t careful. He knows Steph knows that he’s bad with drinking, and she slowed down a while ago, so she’s let him do this on purpose. Distraction, interrogation, he’s not sure. It’s hard to care, perfectly focused as he is on the way the harsh streetlamp light outside refracts and scatters through their little window.

“- and he still gets really broody, sometimes,” Steph is saying, fluffy hair a little wild, eyes a little unfocused. “And we’re all supposed to pretend it’s normal and he’s not just being a giant dick ‘cause he’s angry about not bein’ allowed to see two of his kids. One of whom was, like, dead ‘n’ stuff. Yanno?”

Tim frowns up at her, absorbing. “But, he’s done, like, DNA tests, and stuff, right? Like, he knows it’s Jason?”

Steph poofs up her mouth to blow hair out her eyes, and it’s so funny that Tim’s almost too busy giggling to hear what she says next.

“Sure, he probably knew before you even left. That’s what’s driving him crazy- he just wants to be able to do the Bat-pout on Jason, and tell him how _sorry_ he is for being such a shit dad, and probably kidnap him and put him in that case in the Cave along with his old suit-”

Tim laughs. “The Bat-pout?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

Tim considers; concedes. “Okay, maybe. I don’t think Jason knows any of that, though. He’s doing the dramatic brooding thing too.”

Steph makes a dramatic, sweeping gesture with her strawberry daiquiri. “Right! The both of them. Dumbasses.” She pauses, face twisting. “He’s… he’s treating you good, though, yeah?”

Tim blinks. “What- yeah! Did B ask you to ask? He’s fine; he’s lovely, it’s just sometimes,” he gulps at his drink, “I just get worried, y’know? He’s so _hurt_ , some days, and I never know how to fix it?”

Steph looks at him levelly. “You know you’re a boyfriend, not a therapist, right? Like… he isn’t your responsibility.”

“Yeah, but… yeah. But I love him? I want him to be okay.”

She snorts at him. “Wow, so eloquent. Remind me again how you managed to get into multiple relationships?”

He tries to elbow her from where his head is pillowed in her lap, drowsy, but it doesn’t quite work out. She’s about to retaliate when the door creaks open. Both of their heads slowly peer over the top of the sofa. It’s ridiculous.

Jay’s back, and it looks like he’s brought his ‘errand’. There’s a boy, a little older than them by the looks of it, wrapped halfway around him. He’s got messy red hair, freckles, and he looks barely able to stand.

From beside him, sounding a lot more drunk, Steph hisses, “is that Roy fucking Harper?”

Jason tries to make ‘ta-da’ hands, but instead almost drops Roy, cursing. They scramble over to help, probably too sloppy to be much but a hinderance, and drag him over to the couch, where he collapses, groaning.

Steph looks put out. “ _I_ was gonna sleep there.”

“You were, were you?” Jason sneers.

“Uurrghghghghgh,” contributes Roy.

“As his best friend, it’s my duty to inform you that I'm pretty sure he just said ‘you’re still welcome, babe.’”

“Gross.”

Tim scrubs a hand over his face. “Jay, what’s. What’s?” he tries, looking imploringly at Roy, who’s now snoring on their sofa.

“Yeah, sorry for not explaining before. We go way back- had a thing right after I escaped the League, when we were both pretty fucked up. Now I'm working on it, and he, well…”

Tim says “yeah,” and at the same time Steph asks “the League?”

“Nosy. Anyways, you’re cool with him crashing, yeah?”

Tim beams up at him, dizzy-drunk and happy just to be asked, and says, “your apartment, dude.” Jason wraps an arm around him and it’s so _safe_ he melts into it a little.

Steph ends up on a dusty spare mattress in the hall, which Jay has to drag out, ‘cause they’re giggly-drunk and useless. Tim showers, on strict orders not to slip and kill himself, and then sits quiet, watches Jason undress for bed, notes the bags under his eyes, his tired, crinkling smile. There’s a nameless, faceless warmth in his chest. It’s like suffocating.

“You’re,” he tries, tongue tripping over the words. “You know that you’re a really good person, right?”

Jay smiles at him, tired and soft. “Get to sleep, Drake.”

He kinda wants to chase it, kiss Jason everywhere, soft and slow, until he understands. But the room is safe and warm and quiet around him and he finds he can’t quite keep his eyes open, sinks down deep and mindless into the darkness.

_____

Tim’s clock reads 3:34 am, blinking and green in the smothering darkness. Their bedroom curtains have drifted open, slitting the room with dirty yellow light. That’s not what wakes him up, though. Beside him, every one of Jason’s muscles is tight- he’s suddenly a slab of something cold and unmoving and it chills Tim’s blood enough to rouse him.

“Jay,” he says, choked, and then again, louder and stronger. “Jay.”

Jason’s eyes snap open, and Tim swears there’s more green swirling in them than normal, dusky and scared. For a second, he thinks that Jason is still dreaming, that this is sleep paralysis, but then those eyes lock onto his face and he feels the muscles untense, one by one. He’s aware of his hands, rubbing comfortable circles against Jason’s skin, and he’s thankful for wherever those instincts came from because in his mind he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.

“Jason. You’re scaring me.” His voice is cracked and scratchy. “You need- you need to start talking to me about this. _Please_.”

Jason’s breathing is rapid, pupils still dilated with fear at some horror Tim can’t protect him against.

“Tell me what’s _wrong_ , Jay? It’s the only thing that’s gonna help you.”

Jason is clammy, cold, his skin swirled with goosebumps. The silence drags long enough that Tim thinks he’ll just go back to sleep, refuse to acknowledge it in the morning. The idea that Jason’s been through so much shit that it can paralyse him like this, that he refuses to even mention it- it aches in Tim’s chest.

Then Jason begins, “thing is. When you wake up in a coffin-” and Tim’s blood runs cold.

“When you wake up. You can’t- if you panic you use all the oxygen and then where would you be?”

His voice is something awful.

“You breathe easy; you use your legs. Pray to whatever the fuck you still believe in nobody put you in a metal box. Kick at the centre, where the wood’s weakest, until it gives way.”

Tim doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. Jason’s breath scratches, ragged on the still air.

“You don’ let the dirt trap you inside. You stand up into the ground where it’s cold and wet and craggy and you drag yourself to the surface; or you die, and someday someone’ll dig you up and say _oh, that poor motherfucker_.”

Tim keeps his breathing steady, refuses to freak out. _This is what you asked him for_.

Jason’s voice turns thin, brutal, nasty. “’Course, Bruce didn’t teach me any of that. Maybe he thought it would be kinder if I stayed where I was, y’know? Or easier.”

He’s trembling. “So when _I_ woke up- I, uh. I just screamed.”

Tim’s hands aren’t comforting anymore; they’re clutching at the mattress. There are bleeding half-moons where his nails have bit into his palms.

“I must’ve gotten a hold of my belt buckle, I guess. Tore my way out. It gets a little fuzzy. Mostly I remember scraping my fingers down to _stumps_. Then I stood up. Right?”

The layered, silvery scars at Jason’s fingertips. Tim is such a fucking idiot.

“It’s kinda funny, though, I guess. Everything’s real hazy, and I- I can’t remember digging out, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I'm not still in there, y’know?”

Tim just looks up at Jason, steady. Jason, who isn’t crying, who is already all the way fallen apart. A sad smile cracks his face, small and warm.

He says, “you’re right _here_ , Jay,” as soft and real as he can make it. Jason’s face crumples.

“Yeah,” he says, like he doesn’t believe it at all. “That’s what it looks like, isn’t it?”

Tim puts his arms around him, feels Jason’s voice break. He realises he’s chanting ‘ _righthererighthere’_ under his breath, like a mantra, like a prayer.

God, he’s so tired. It’s soul-heavy.

Jason is crying a little, now. It’s muted, unpractised. He dimly wonders it’s Jason’s first time this lifetime.

Mouth against his collarbone, Tim says, “if you were still down there, Jay? I’d come for you. On God.”

“If I'm still down there, you’re not real.”

It scrapes across Tim’s chest, the impact of it, leaving something raw and heavy in his throat.

“I feel real, right now.”

“Yeah, babybird.” Jason sounds unquantifiably exhausted, all at once. “Me too.”

They stay right there, real and unmoving, until the sun rises. It feels like bleeding out.

When Jason sits up, Tim thinks he probably hasn’t slept at all. Tim doesn’t remember sleeping, not exactly, but the in-between hours are cloaked in a merciful haze that doesn’t seem to follow here, in the stretched-sharp light of morning. Jason’s eyes are puffy and bruised. It’s human and damaged in a way Tim can’t handle.

“You need to go back to the manor,” Jason says. Tim frowns, his brain uncooperative.

“What? No?”

“Tim,” Jason says. His voice isn’t awful and flat and raspy anymore, it’s somehow scarier. “This is fucked up. Everything about me is fucked up. You don’t deserve to be here; you deserve to have your family looking after you.” The kindness in his voice makes Tim’s throat ache.

“You look after me,” he says, sitting small on the edge of their mattress. “I look after you. I thought that was what we did.”

“We can still do that. _Fuck,_ babybird, it’s not that I don’t want you. I just don’ know how to tell you that this _can’t_ go on. It’s not- I'm not enough. To be everything for you.”

Tim turns bodily to look at him, hunched and miserable against the headboard, and believes him. Thinks of every single time he’s thought _I don’t know what I'm doing, I don’t know how to fix him_ , and reflects that Jason’s probably been thinking the same.

He lets his head drop to his chest. “We’re really that fucked up, huh?”

Jason lets out a tired laugh. “It’s on-brand. Probably.”

They sit there, thinking it over. When Tim reaches across the bed to pull their bodies together, Jason doesn’t stop him, and they lie intertwined as the brightening sunbeam travels up their bed.

“If you want me to go,” Tim says, “I think you should tell me everything first. As a trust thing. And also so none of the bad things that might happen will surprise me.”

Jason huffs a laugh against his back. “That sounds like Red Robin to me. How many contingencies for this conversation?”

“Bold of you to assume I had any plan for absolutely any of this.”

“Oh, well, _that_ explains a lot.” His tone is offended but his body is still pressed warm around Tim’s, so Tim doesn’t bother apologising. The silence between them is comfortable, this time. “Look,” Jason continues, when he’s ready, “I’ll tell you anything you wanna know. I swear. But- just be careful what you say around the bats, right? I got a reputation, and all that.”

Tim smirks, tiredly. “Oh no, not your reputation as a callous asshole who never _talks to anyone_.”

“That’s the one.”

“Seriously, like, over a year of fighting crime on the same streets as your _dad_ and you never bothered to, like, make a house call?”

“He ain’t my _dad.”_

“Sorry, my bad, _ex_ -dad-” and it’s so stupid but Jason is laughing behind him and the empty of the night feels millennia ago. “Drama queen,” he accuses.

“That _is_ on-brand. Know how I used to have the helmet and then the mask?”

Tim gasps, loud and mocking. “You were allowing for the possibility of a _dramatic reveal_?”

“Never say never.”

“’Course, it didn’t quite work out like that, huh.”

Jason’s silent for a beat too long, and Tim thinks maybe he’s strayed into sensitive territory without meaning to. But then:

“Nah. Probably- probably for the best. I had all these plans, you know? I was gonna make them _pay_ , for leaving me unavenged- for replacing me.” There’s something vaguely apologetic in his voice, where his breath ghosts against the nape of Tim’s neck. “But some days it just got so hard to keep that anger, not when there were people suffering all around me already. And then I figured- I’d already died for Batman, y’know? I wasn’t going to live for him too.”

Tim doesn’t answer, doesn’t _have_ an answer. But Jay’s finally, _finally_ talking, secrets fading in the quiet air, and the truth of him settles firm and secure against Tim’s spine.

\-----

_‘you say I deserve it, all that is coming, the good and the bad_

_but I don't regret it- how could I? you were the best I ever had,_

_I ever had, I ever had, I ever had, I ever-‘_

\-----

They force themselves out of bed around ten, Tim’s hangover catching up with him the second he tries to stand up. It’s almost comic how quickly his face turns green, and Jason laughs at him, long and slow, like a _prick_. He gets his revenge, though, because Jay’s entirely forgotten about Steph’s mattress in the hall, and he trips over it spectacularly, goes sprawling. Groaning, Steph opens her eyes, rolling over to absorb the mess.

“Huh,” she says, voice thick with sleep. “The dreaded Red Hood. Mornin’.”

“Mornin’,” mumbles Jason, unintelligible where his face is pressed into the floor. Tim scowls at her.

“How’re you not hungover? The fuck?”

She beams. “God loves me too much, stupid. Hurry up- I can smell coffee.”

Tim and Jay exchange puzzled looks, but sure enough, as they step into the kitchen, there’s a fresh pot on the side and bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Roy smiles at them sheepishly from where he’s poking at it.

Tim groans. “Okay, bullshit, there’s no way _you’re_ not hungover.”

Roy looks smug, spreads his arms. “Sorry, Timmy. I’ve had worse.”

He’s lying, a little bit. Tim’s good at noticing stuff like that. He’s very pale, unnaturally so, his lips dry and chapped, his smile forced. But in fairness he’s in a room full of people who’ve just seen him at what must be a low point, and it’s an easy mercy to pretend the cracks don’t show.

Jason slots in behind him, reaching up to the cupboard where they keep the bread, his shirt riding up over his stomach. Tim pours some coffee for himself and Steph and watches the two of them as he drinks it, contemplative. They slot together so easy, so familiar, Jay pulling Roy close to his side for a moment, like he’s ascertaining he’s really here, really okay. It presses a tiny burning jealousy into Tim’s stomach, like a brand, but. It’s no different from how he is with Steph, really. And Jay having a support system outside of Tim is a relief he can’t even name.

Speaking of Steph, she catches his eyes and smiles like she’s read his mind. She was always good at that, he remembers.

“What’s the plan, then?” he asks. “What’s your mission report going to look like?”

It would be a rude question if he hadn’t spent most of the previous evening quizzing her on every detail of her life that he missed, every future plan or idea. He’s actually avoided asking about his family- it’s daunting in a new and scary way.

She blows hair out of her eyes, thinking. Jason has notably stilled in front of the stove, probably remembering for the first time that one of their comfortable little entourage is technically a spy.

“Um. Honestly, I'm not sure? He’s already going to kill me for staying over-”

“-Why?” Roy raises an eyebrow. “What will he think you’ve been _up to_?”

She snorts. “Whatever you’re even implying- fuck off. Nah, he’ll have waited up all night in that fuckin’ chair, ready to interrogate me about his _sons_. He’s already beyond pissed that Dick says he’s not allowed to do his creepy lurking thing. And Alfred. Dick on his own couldn’t say shit.”

Jason turns, amused, though a little shaky. “This place is under the protection of Alfred? Christ.” He looks at Roy. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

“Wait, what?” Tim’s eyebrows make a little crease.

“Oh, yeah,” a grin spreads on Roy’s face. “Forgot to mention. You’re harbouring a fugitive, little Timmy- the Bat doesn’t want me in his city.”

Steph looks interested, which, for Roy, is a first. “I’ll bet that’s a story.”

“Mm-hmm. Not that I could tell it. Wouldn’t want the secret juicy bits getting back to the man himself- I gotta keep some of my secrets.”

“Ah, I'm not gonna tell him shit about you. You know what they say about snitches.” She pauses, considering, her face paling a fraction. “Unless, y’know. He asks.”

“He stopped daddy dearest from dragging Killer Croc’s ass back to Arkham. It was pretty insane, actually.” Jason rolls his eyes, divides the cooked bacon and toast across four plates.

“Aw, Jaybird, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Roy simpers, batting his eyelashes. Jason apparently doesn’t deem this worthy of a reply, and they eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Eventually Steph pushes her plate back and pulls on her jacket, looking regretful.

“Okay. Plan is this: I go back, suck up to Alfred for a bit so at least if Bruce murders me then he’ll get the _look-_ ”

“ _Bruce Wayne is Batman_?” Roy asks, mock-stupefied. Jason elbows him in the side.

“Oh, shut it. Then B’ll ask me for a ‘mission report’ and try to pretend he’s not hanging on every word. I say you were fine, and we just talked for a couple of hours and went to sleep. I say Jay was there and he didn’t really speak much except to groan and say ‘ _braaiins_ ’-”

“- _Brown-_ ”

“-okay, okay, Jay was here but he just stayed in the bedroom to give us some space. By which I mean his bedroom. His separate bedroom from Tim’s. Tim who still doesn’t know what intercourse is, I don’t know what you’re talking about, B-”

“If you say _anything_ about my sex life I'm changing the locks.” Steph smirks at him, unrepentant and radiant, and _oh_ , he’s missed her.

“Ah, you know that wouldn’t stop me. Okay, boys, it’s been a pleasure.” Jason nods, smiling, and Roy flashes her a salute. She turns her gaze to Tim. “You’ve got my number, now, okay? _Use it_.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You better. See you around, yeah?”

The door clicks shut behind her and Tim’s sad, but a little hopeful too.

\-----

“Sure you don’t want a clipboard?”

“Shut _up_ , Jay. The twenty-minute psychology TED talk I watched says you’re using humour as a deflection mechanism.”

Jason flushes, displeased, perched on the sofa opposite Tim. He’s got the door on one side and the window on another- multiple escape routes, Tim notes. But Jason won’t run. He _promised_. It’s mid-afternoon and Roy’s out doing something of questionable legality, so they have the apartment to themselves to. Well. Jason’s calling it an interrogation, but there was something soft and relieved in his eyes when Tim broached finally having this conversation. There’s probably a lot of shit he’s kept deep down for a long time, now.

“Of course you researched this. That’s why you’re the _boring_ Robin.”

Tim frowns at him. “I'm not the boring Robin- don’t think Bruce didn’t used to tell me how much of a nerd you used to be. In order it’s holy Robin, Batman! then _nerd_ Robin, then the model B finally perfected, then demon Robin. The Internet agrees with me, probably.”

Jay looks moderately weirded out by the Internet having any sort of opinion on them. “I didn’t make all those horrible life choices to be the _nerd_ Robin. I deserve cautionary-tale-Robin, at least.”

Tim can’t stop himself from wincing, and cold seeps into Jason’s eyes, his frame stiffening. “Oh. He went there. Alright.”

It’s so blank and awful, the way any mention of Jason’s past usually is, and Tim so desperately wants to push past it. Instead he makes himself sit still, receptive, says, “Jason.”

Jason’s shoulders sag, just a little. “Alright, fine. Let’s get it over with. You know the whole sob story, right? Mom, Ethiopia, Joker, boom.”

Tim flinches. Jay has the courtesy to look a little sorry.

“Right. So, fast-forward a year, thereabouts, and. I just- I wake up. You know that bit. Total shitshow. We figured I spent about a year on the streets, after that, just… catatonic. I’ve seen surveillance footage. The lights are on, but nobody’s home, yanno?”

“Jesus. You don’t remember anything?”

“Snatches. Sometimes it gets me thinking- all those times I must’ve slept streets away from the Manor? I know it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just-”

“Yeah,” says Tim. It’s all he can say.

“Anyways. Eventually some street thug gets lucky, recognises Robin. Phones it in to wherever he figures he can make the most cash.”

“The League,” finishes Tim, heavy-hearted.

“Mm. They drop me in a pit, probably for blackmail, I was never sure, and. I, uh, wake up angry.”

And, _oh._ Suddenly a lot of things click into place. The anger, rolling and heavy, the trace of green in Jason’s irises. An immeasurable sadness weighs at him. “There’s a name for that, you know,” he says, keeps his voice steady. “What the pit does to you. It’s a recognised mental illness.” The words are hollow in his ears.

Jason doesn’t look particularly convinced. It can be a problem for another day. God, he really knows nothing about Jason, does he? “Sure, babybird. I was- I was pretty fucked up, anyway. They ‘trained’ me for a good year, which was, uh. Not that different from what I’d been used to, before? Then Talia showed me a handful of pictures of this _new Robin_ , and the Joker alive and well. It was- I was so _mad_. We fucked around for a bit, and she sent me off to learn- what?”

Tim’s bright red. “Talia? You’re sure?”

Jay blinks at him. “It was pretty memorable, yeah..? Look, it _sounds_ weird-”

 _You have no idea_ , thinks Tim. _How do I tell him ‘don’t tell Damian you fucked his mom’ without telling him ‘you fucked Damian’s mom’?_

Aloud, he says, “No, nevermind. What happened next?”

Jason winces. “I told you, it ain’t pretty. She put me in contact with people, around the world, to train me into this perfect little assassin. I, uh, I didn’t leave much behind.”

Tim feels a little numb. “Right.”

“But then I feel myself… losing momentum, I guess? I know _now_ that it was the stink of the Pit rubbing off of me, but back then it just felt like a whole lot of nothing where the anger had been? I ended up running back to Gotham, after all those years. I guess I just wanted to finish something? But by the time I put that bomb under Bruce’s car all the rage was bleeding out, and- you know how that story ends.”

Tim does. He remembers, crystalline, the pinched, pale look on Bruce’s face, the ugly curling mass of wire and metal, disassembled in his hands after near four hours. There’s a motion, a kind of squeeze at the bridge of his nose, that Bruce does when he’s very tired and very close to losing it. He’d seen it for the first time then, sad and raw and awfully human. He nods at Jason. He doesn’t fully trust his own words.

“I was gonna make another go of it, this final showdown, y’know? I’d make it so the bastard had to choose between me and Joker, and, goddamn best case scenario, he’d just fuckin’ end the both of us?” He makes a dismissive gesture at Tim’s little intake of breath. “It’s not- I'm over it, ‘kay? But everything was falling apart so quickly, and, lucky for my sorry ass, that’s when I met Roy.”

Tim sighs, relieved even though he knew from the start how Jason’s story wound up. “And you guys looked after each other.”

Jason nods, his eyes a little hollow from the outpouring of truth. “And now you look after me, too. I'm pretty lucky, all considered.”

Tim bites his lip. “But you still want me to _go_.”

“I still think it’s a good idea. I'm not- Christ, babybird, I'm not kicking you out. I just mean… eventually.”

Tim thinks those’re enough answers for today. He stands and wordlessly drops into Jason’s lap, feels Jason’s arms wrap around his waist, like coming home.

Jay is shaking, bodily. Tim thinks about trying to lay out his own life like that, the solitude, the loneliness, the messy race just to _prove_ something. It leaves him feeling hollowed, an echo chamber for Jason’s grief. Jay’s braver than he can even understand, and it’s so _messed up_. He clings tight, rubbing soothing circles into his shoulders, and feels Jay let go against him, little fragmented sobs, like how a child cries.

“Oh, Jay,” he says, even though pity isn’t what Jason wants or needs. “If I’d known from the start- I swear I would’ve been better. I'm sorry. I just- I never thought-”

Jason pulls him up, kisses the apology out of his mouth, soft and messy and tearstained.

“I didn’t want you any better. You did just fine, yeah?”

Tim relaxes, pressed so close to Jay it’s like they’re one being.

“Alright. Okay.”

It’s about then when Roy Harper lands with a heavy thunking sound on their fire escape, messy with blood. Jason swears, soft and pronounced, in Tim’s ear, and oh, hello, normalcy. Guess this is his life now.

\-----

Tim is staring at his phone.

Jason’s immersed in a book at the other end of the sofa; Tim can’t read the title from here. Roy is tinkering with something electric in the other room. Jason officially benched him after yesterday’s fiasco, and his nervous energy is humming throughout the room, grating. Tim ignores it, a nervous feeling in his gut as he contemplates the device. He’s already had several conversations over text with Steph, after she’d left. But the most recent message she’s sent him is just a string of numerals, one he’d specifically requested.

He wants to call it. But, although he doesn’t remember everything, yet, it would be hard to forget that Cass never answers her phone.

Tim fights down his nervousness, tries to convince himself it’s irrational. He copies the phone number, creates a new contact, hits the ‘text’ button.

Oh, God, he has no idea what to say.

_Sorry I didn’t speak to you much when I was a total amnesiac and had only a vague idea you were my sister? In hindsight, a semi-mute combat trained Chinese teenager would’ve been quite hard for Bruce and Dick to explain away, but I know everything now, and I miss you?_

He swallows, types out ‘hey, Cass’ and sends it. Roy swears softly as Tim sees sparks flash from the other room.

Almost immediately, his phone buzzes. He looks down. It’s… three heart emojis. Okay then.

_you’ve been keeping yourself safe?_

One thumbs up, two smileys.

_um, this is Tim._

A much longer pause, then:

_I know. Silly._

Right. Of course she does. Tim has absolutely no idea where to go from here. His fingers hover over the keyboard uselessly for a few seconds, but then Cass sends another text.

 _I can come_. He breathes a big sigh of relief.

_okay yes please_

Possibly he’s too emotionally stunted to have a successful text-reunion anyways. On the way out of his messages app he notices something, snorts.

“What?” says Jason, sleepily.

“Nothing,” Tim says. “I forgot your contact was still saved as Red Hood. Dramatic bastard.”

Jason smirks at him. “Hey, don’ change it. I like it.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cass is coming over, by the way.”

“Really,” Jason delivers deadpan, so he twists, and sure enough, that’s Black Bat on their fire escape. _Damn_ , that fire escape has seen a lot. Roy wanders in, in the general direction of the kitchen, spots the black silhouette and nearly falls over. Cass shoots him a little wave.

Tim opens the window, watches her climb in, impossibly graceful. She does cut a daunting figure, but all he can see is his sister.

“That was quick,” he says, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. She tugs off of the cowl, face impossibly young and happy. He feels Roy do another take behind him, knows Jason is looking on with interest.

“Steph told me. What you asked,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “You took _ages_.”

He blushes. “Sorry, was working through some stuff. How’re you doing?”

The hug she gives him is answer enough.

“Missed you,” she says, voice muffled.

“Yeah,” he says, thickly, tears rising unbidden to his eyes. “I really missed you too, Cass.”

She pulls away, looks at him levelly. “Everyone has been missing. Bruce and Dick and Damian. And your friends, the little superheroes. They come by sometimes and they are always sad. Everybody feels you gone.”

His throat aches. _Conner and Cassie and Bart and-_ fuck, a whole life just taken from him, oh-so quick and brutal. Behind him, Roy asks, “do you guys want some space?”

Cass turns to him, gives Tim a second to regain his composure.

“You are Roy Harper.”

“Uh, yeah. My reputation precedes me?”

“Jason trusts you. Tim trusts Jason. Is okay.” Roy looks briefly stunned. Tim can sympathise. They’ve all heard stranger things, done stranger things, but something about Cass’s particular brand of compassionate honesty is breathtaking, every time. Jason looks just as unsettled when Cass turns to him, observes for a moment.

“Uh, hey. We haven’t- officially- met yet.” She cocks her head at him, and he shrinks down, white strands of hair falling in his face.

“I saw you shoot Nightwing. Two times. In his shoulder and his thigh. Not where you meant to hit him, I think.” Jason flinches, minutely, as her words sink in. She holds his gaze, steely, for a moment, but then her expression softens. “Is okay, too. You were angry then, and- not you. I don’t have words for it.”

Jason looks at her, open, like she’s a blessing, the way he looks at Tim, sometimes. “No. I don’t have words for it either.”

She smiles, like he gets it. “Dick says it is okay, anyway. He says you should’ve been my brother. Not your fault that this happened instead.”

Now it’s Jason who looks like he’s going to cry. If Dick had said that to his face Tim guarantees there would’ve been screaming, the anger deep and raw. But anger doesn’t seem to compute around Cass- there’s nothing false about her, no edges for rage to catch on. She emanates this calm, radiant truth, like nothing Tim’s ever known.

He clears his throat. “I really have missed you, y’know. I can make some hot chocolate and you can tell me what you’ve been up to?”

She grins, sunny. “Deal.”

He moves over to the kitchen area, pulling out a pan and hunting down some milk that probably hasn’t expired yet. Cass disappears: she likes to get the measure of new spaces, when possible, just in case. Every new detail he remembers makes his heart lighter. So much so he doesn’t hold it against Roy and Jason when they laugh at him balancing precariously on the stove to try and reach the cocoa powder on the top shelf, instead of _helping like a good person would_.

He’s trying to figure out the burner controls when Jason appears at his side, starts breaking a chocolate bar into pieces to melt into the milk, just the way Cass likes it. He figures that’s enough of an apology for now. Okay, he hasn’t strictly ever done this for himself- he’s always been very skilled at pushing the right buttons on a babysitter or butler or boyfriend to make food happen- but he’s not going to embarrass himself making hot chocolate. He’s _not_.

Two minutes later he gets distracted when Cass re-enters the room, out of uniform, tiny in Jason’s patrol jacket (it’s actually just a regular jacket, but shh). He only notices she’s laughing at him when Jason swears and pushes him out of the way at the sharp hiss of boiled-over milk, and he’s officially banished back to the couch. Cass sits with him, though, in comfortable silence, and Roy pulls out a board game Tim didn’t know they owned. He’s reading out the rules when Jason comes over with four mugs of hot chocolate, and Cass interrupts him.

“Sorry. Forgot to ask. Your chest- is good?”

They stare at her blankly for a second, then Tim remembers why Roy’s stuck on house arrest with them and isn’t out somewhere disappointing his parental figure.

“Holy shit. You were there when Roy got cut up? He hasn’t told _us_ what happened.”

Roy buries his head in his hands. There’s a twinkle in Cass’s eye.

“Was worried. Patrolling when scanner said dealers, gunfight, co-ordinates not far from mine. By the time I got there he’d mostly cleared up. I dropped in to help. He gaped, got himself stabbed.”

Jason looks like he’s struggling to control himself. She adds, helpfully, “like an idiot.”

Roy makes a dragged-out groaning noise. Tim forces down his grin, says, “I’ve been reliably informed he’s not at the top of his game, Cass.”

“Yes,” she says, eyes wide, like they’re not getting it. “That is why I was worried.”

Roy looks at her, his freckles obscured by the red staining his cheeks. “I'm fine, kid. I’ve been coming down. It ain’t pretty.”

“ _Oh._ I see- I didn’t know- I usually can tell.” She looks a little flustered.

“No biggie. Come on guys, pick a colour.”

“I want to be red,” say Tim and Jason simultaneously, then both try grabbing for it and end up falling over each other.

Cass looks at Roy and says, quietly, “Arsenal is red too, yes?” He nods and discreetly takes it. Cass appears to trust that this makes up for her previous misstep, and Tim and Jason pick themselves up and choose green and white, respectively. She picks the yellow one, after a moment’s careful consideration.

“Okay,” Roy says, looking like he’s regretting this course of action more and more every minute. “Now spin the spinner- I’ll start, actually- and one of you has to read me a question that’s the colour I landed on.”

“I will read,” Cass says, solemnly. Roy spins and lands on pink. “Entertainment: Actress best known for Princess Leia in _Star Wars_. Died in 2016.” Tim flips the timer.

“Uhh, what’s-her-fucking, man _I know this_! I _love her_ \- Carrie Fisher!!”

Cass gives him a little cheer, even though Tim’s willing to bet she’s never seen a single _Star Wars._

On Tim’s right, Jason makes an awful, wounded noise. “ _Carrie Fisher died?_ Three years ago?”

“Oh, shit,” says Roy. Tim winces.

“ _Oh my God what the fuck._ I must’ve still been training with the League- what the _fuck_?!” Tim feels the irrational urge to cover Cass’s ears. He takes a gulp of hot chocolate.

“Buddy, it’ll be okay,” Roy is saying. “We got through it!”

“Carrie Fisher? You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure, Jaybird. Come on, you spin.” Still shaking his head, eyes wide, Jason does. It’s purple.

“Arts and Literature,” recites Cass, faithfully. “Which famous modernist novel begins with the line ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed’?”

“’ _Ulysses’_ , right? Not like I could fuckin’ forget it. James Joyce can meet me in the pit.” Cass pushes the white counter a place forward, to join the red one.

From behind them, a familiar Gotham drawl says, “Wow, you really were the nerd Robin, weren’t you?” Tim twists to grin at her, vindicated.

Jason scrubs a hand over his eyes. “How do you keep getting in here?”

Steph smiles prettily. “I got bored of waitin’ for Cass, sue me.” She turns to Tim. “We were together when you texted,” she says, like it’s in any way an adequate explanation.

“Together… on the roof of this apartment?” clarifies Roy.

“Please, I'm a bat. It’s what we do. Ooh, I wanna be the purple counter.”

“It’s eggplant,” Tim says, face straight.

“Damn straight.”

She settles down, kneeling on a cushion opposite Tim, like they were never without her. As they play, Cassandra keeps her word. She’s not a big fan of exposition, as a rule, but she’s drinking Tim’s (Jason’s) hot chocolate and so she must fulfil her side of the bargain. In the year Tim’s been out of the loop she’s been all over- Hong Kong, Europe, undercover in Moscow for a stretch. She’s even spent some time with the Team, which makes Tim ache with cold jealousy even as he knows it’s unwarranted. But Jason is a long line of heat curled around him, and he’s okay. Really and truly.

Jason who turns out to be _spectacularly bad at trivia games_ , and also a nightmare to play with. Like:

“Dude, gay people have been able to marry here since, like, 2015. How did-”

“Oh _I'm sorry_ , I was probably too busy being _six feet underground_!”

Or:

“You’re serious, Jaybird?”

“ _Adele_ is back? _A-fucking-dele?_ I didn’t fucking die for this.”

As a result, as the sun draws low in the sky, blood-red seeping over the horizon, the scores look like:

  * Steph
  * Tim
  * Roy
  * Jason
  * Cass (mostly she just likes to read the questions)



Secure in her victory, Steph stretches, catlike. “Anyone have one of B’s credit cards? I could really go for a Chinese before I finish thrashing you all.” Tim scowls at her.

A new voice replies, “I do.”

As one, they all turn to the doorway. Damian is leaning there, thoroughly unimpressed.

Jason looks skyward, as if praying for divine intervention. “Red Hood’s home for wayward vigilantes. _Please,_ at least wipe your shoes on the mat. How are you people even getting in?”

Not unpredictably, his plea goes unanswered. Tim personally thinks it’s got something to do with the vents.

Damian takes his shoes off entirely, padding over to sit next to Cass, who pulls him close. He takes a black plastic debit card with the Wayne Industries logo on it out of his pocket and hands it to Stephanie. She grins at it in a slightly manic way.

“Thanks, baby bat. The old man never trusted me with one of these- wonder why? Hey, are those Batman socks?” Damian crosses his legs, tucking the offending socks away, scowling. “Okay, what do people want?” she asks, opening the notes page on her phone. Tim observes Damian as the orders come flooding in. He’s flushed and a little sulky, clearly uncomfortable with being the centre of attention in such a tight-knit gathering. _Why are you here, then_? Tim wants to ask, but doesn’t.

The kid’s in designer jeans and a plain black fleece- he’s come from the Manor, not patrol, then. Steph is in full Batgirl gear from the neck down, Cass swimming in Jay’s jacket. Roy’s in sweats, bandages peeking out from under his tee. Jason’s shirt is patterned with flowers and a little discoloured where blood hasn’t washed all the way out. What a fucking team they make. It gives Tim an idea.

After Steph’s called in their order, he says, “hey, does Dick still use his Snapchat?”

“Sure,” says Steph. “I have seen _so_ many gym selfies. And also videos of dogs he sees on the street.”

Damian mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like, “I like the dog videos.”

“Why, anyways?”

Tim flushes, self-conscious. “I thought maybe we should send a photo. Show him and Bruce what they’re missing?”

Jason stiffens behind him and Tim worries he’s said the wrong thing, but then he’s laughing, long and low. Steph’s grin widens, slowly.

“Ooh, you’re evil,” she says.

“If he turns up at our door crying, we’re throwing you out there and saving ourselves,” says Roy, and the others seem inclined to agree.

Steph takes the photo. It gives Cass some serious redeye, but she seems to like it, disregarding Steph’s offer to fix it. They’re huddled close, to fit everyone in, and it’s so domestic Tim finds himself needing to take a minute. Jason’s in the very centre, surrounded by _family_. All Tim can think is _all this could be yours, if you’d just take it._

The photo’s sent just in time for the doorbell to ring for their takeout. There’s a buzz of excitement as the party disperses to grab plates and cutlery, or in Roy’s case, to just eat out of the box with his fingers. After attempting to wield chopsticks three separate times, Steph looks on the cusp of joining him. It leaves Tim and Jason alone on the sofa, curled around each other.

“Seriously, babybird,” asks Jason, low and sleepy. “Why’d you do it?”

Tim considers his words. “I figured… well, it’s a lot less destructive revenge plan than a _car bomb_. And you’re allowed to still be angry at them, even if I'm here now.”

Jason considers. “What, killing ‘em with kindness? Making them _jealous_?”

Tim smiles. “Something like that.”

What he doesn’t say, is: I love everybody in this apartment so much, and you already love them too, and Bruce and Dick love them and me _and you_ , and surely, with so many people loving each other, there’ll be no room left for hurt.

He hopes Jay will figure it out, though.

After they’ve eaten, when they’re curled up talking, tired and sleepy, the board game forgotten, Steph remembers to open Dick’s reply.

It’s a selfie of him grinning- literally that’s all his snaps ever are. He’s in an office chair that must be in front of the Batcomputer, judging by the view of the rest of the cave. There’re heavy dark circles smudged under his eyes and he just looks so goddamn _tender_.

‘ _you all look so happy. jay really grew up, huh?’_

Steph doesn’t reply; doesn’t show it to anyone, either.

\-----

_‘but I won't stop this, and you won't stop this._

_it'll probably go further than either of us wanted.’_

\-----

It’s unreasonably early when Jason wakes up; dawn peeks her golden fingers of light through their thin curtains, taunting him. This schedule is a relic from his League days, and although exhaustion and teenage rebellion have mostly dragged him out of it, when he’s up: he’s up.

Snippets of conversations from last night drift through his mind, enough to overwhelm him, even now. It’s- it’s been a long time since he was a Bat in Gotham, and so much has changed, and yet. Surrounded by friends in the warm glow of the evening skyline, it was almost like he’d never left. Even though they aren’t _his_ friends. Even though that’s a very, very dangerous way to think.

He abandons any hope of getting back to sleep, sits up. Tim makes a quiet, unhappy noise, and curls into the warmth he left behind. A soft feeling pervades Jason’s chest, diffusing even through the guilt of kept secrets, and it makes him think back to when this thing between them was tenuous and new, when they’d had lifetimes hidden from each other. It’d been this feeling, knife-edged, every time he’d gone to load bullets into a gun, since that first night. Like he’s got people to let down, now.

He’d thought it would be heavy, suffocating, like had been with Bruce. Instead it’s more like a beginning, like a pink sky delicate and shy with morning sunrays.

He very carefully gets up, pads out into the hall in socks and boxers and a worn-out t-shirt. He remembers to dodge the mattress there, holding Cass and Stephanie, this time. They’re curled up around each other tightly, but as he carefully steps over them, Cass gifts him with a single, sleepy smile. He contrasts it with the voiceless wrath of Batgirl and grins back. The soft feeling remains.

In the living area, Roy is dead to the world, sprawled, ungainly, on the long sofa he’s claimed as his own. Jason ruffles his hair in passing, safe in the knowledge he won’t feel it. Damian, for his part, is curled very small, tightly compacted in one of their armchairs. It can’t be comfortable, but Jason remembers his own training with the League, remembers being pushed so hard for so long that sleep anywhere was blessed, was a mercy. That’s stayed with him, the ability to drift off anywhere, and it looks like it’s stayed with Damian, too. Jason feels, unguarded, a wave of empathy, of pity for the kid, and it nearly bowls him over. This is ridiculous. He’s known the boy for all of evening.

But the softness in his chest doesn’t diminish. This- he _wants_ this, wants a lifetime contained in that photograph from last night, pink-cheeked and safe and happy. Even thoughts of Dick in that life, of Bruce, can’t tamp down the softness, the wanting. It terrifies him.

There was someone he’d always found himself searching for, when he was scared, before. And amongst everything that was discussed last night there was- this. Her.

He hopes that his plan works.

Jason slips out onto the fire escape, and usually the muscle memory is enough to trigger his cravings, the tattered, ugly itch for a cigarette in the borders of his mind. But this time there’s a strange nothing, blank in the clean light of morning. Hand over hand, he uses the rusted metal to climb to the roof of the building, where, if he remembers right, there’s-

A security camera.

He swallows, in front of it, suddenly feeling ridiculous. It’s probably too late to turn back now.

“Hey,” he says. “Um. Sorry for not checking in earlier. I- I only found out you were doing this last night, actually.”

A whole lot of nothing. He thinks, dully, that the guys in the security room are probably laughing at him.

Ha. Like he pays enough rent for this building to have a security room.

The wind ruffles through his hair, messing it up even further, and he sighs, turns to climb back down, when his pocket vibrates. He pulls out his phone, and there’s a text from a number he doesn’t recognise.

_Keep talking._

Hope stirs through him, dull and heady. This is crazy.

“I, uh,” he says, turning back around. “I genuinely thought you’d have done your mandatory physical therapy and gotten the hell outta the life. Y’know, picket fence a million miles from here, two and a half kids. Shoulda known you weren’t a quitter.”

Another number.

 _I guess we both made some bad assumptions_.

He laughs. “Thinking I was dead wasn’t wrong or an assumption. It was just… true. And then it wasn’t.” A beat. “This is exactly as fuckin’ creepy as you think it is, by the way.”

He’s not entirely sure, but he hopes she’s grinning in front of a screen somewhere, the same grin he remembers.

_Okay, I was just being nice. You were a dumbass. You still are._

“Naw,” he says, no heat behind it. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you miss me.”

_We’ve all missed you, more than you could believe. Dick liked your picture, by the way._

He rolls his eyes, makes sure the camera gets it. “Of course you would intercept that.”

_It did make him cry._

“Sure it did. He was just mad we didn’t invite him to game night.”

 _Maybe I was upset_.

He winces. “I'm sorry. I didn’t think. Not about the game night, I mean. When I got back into Gotham I was focused on a million different things with the Bats who _were_ in the picture. I never even thought to worry- shoulda known everytime Dickiebird asked _Oracle_ the best way to kick my ass, he was talking to you.”

 _I didn’t know it was you_ , the next text reads. He supposes that’s meant as an apology for all the times she’s kicked his ass by proxy. “Right. When did you figure it out, anyway?”

_About fifteen minutes after everybody else, apparently, when Dick texted me and told me. I'm sorry, too. I dropped the ball._

“Huh,” he smirks. “I was smart enough to evade the goddamn _Oracle_.”

_In my defence, you were very far down my priority list._

“Hey!” he yelps. “I basically kidnapped the Wayne heir. And _corrupted_ him.”

_A couple of kids fucking around on a rooftop don’t set off any of my usual alarms. I don’t know how it happened, but I really had no idea. The idea of keeping tabs on Tim didn’t sit right- he was so strongly independent._

“Yeah. Hey, I wonder- would there have been enough left of him, subconsciously, to evade your usual, y’know. Haunts?”

 _I don’t_ haunt.

“Yeah, like I said before- this is still creepy as shit. We could’ve just got coffee.”

 _It’s an interesting idea. I haven’t studied psychology as intimately as a lot of other topics- I can rectify that. And you didn’t_ ask _me for coffee._

“Right. Which of these disgustingly encrypted fake phone numbers should I have sent that text to?”

 _Point_.

“I’ve… I’ve really missed you, Babs. More than I knew. You should come to the next game night.”

 _You’re already planning another one? Are you_ settling?

The question hits him like cold water, the soft ache in his chest condensing to something more rigid. He’s… he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know what he _wants_. He had been joking, but now everything just feels messy. Maybe he’s getting attached- falling once again for the family who want him for his smashed-up fragments of Jason Todd, age fifteen-and-three-quarters, nothing more.

_Hey, Jay. Take a breath. Give me a date and time, and I’ll be there. Promise._

He does: breathes out long and low, shaky, and offers the camera a watery smile.

Somewhere, far across Gotham, Barbara Gordon returns it, tear-tracks staining her cheeks.

\-----

It’s like his subconscious _knows_ the second Jason is gone, clawing at Tim’s mind in a feeble tantrum. Tim manages a few more hours, alone in the bed, but has to give it up as a lost cause. This is not on brand. Timothy Drake, night-owl supreme, stumbles blearily out of bed at seven a.m. _sharp_.

The girls on the mattress are dead to the world, curse them, and Roy Harper is gently snoring as Tim gravitates to the coffee machine. He’s vaguely worried the soft bleeping will wake up one of them, but not worried enough to, y’know, not make coffee. As he reaches for his old Superman mug, he tries to put a positive spin on things- this is when he got up at before the accident, when he was full-time Red Robin as well as twenty other things. He can use this extra time for anything- he hasn’t hacked properly in ages, and he’s had his eye on the new database the US military is setting up.

His body seems to disagree, though, rearing with old, fraudulent pain. He pours his coffee and drinks it, gulping down half the cup and hating his life a little less. Not nearly as much as he’d hated months of his life, before Jason, so he’s not really complaining.

Speaking of Jason- he’s not worried. He really isn’t. Jason’s been leaving the apartment a little more, recently, although never so early, and never without telling Tim. But if he’s going to heal, to move on, this is probably an important step. Regaining trust in the city, or something. Man, Tim knows nothing about psychology. Next time they go to the library he’s picking up something on trauma, as subtly as he can.

He’s going to refill his mug- he doesn’t have a problem, shut up- when he becomes aware of a small sound behind him, a tiny, frantic, stifled series of breaths. He turns, not immediately observing anything wrong, puzzled. Red Robin instincts screaming, he moves slowly, silently to where the boys are sleeping. And sees it.

Damian’s entire frame is tensed, his muscles bunched, coiled in on himself. Still asleep, he’s biting viciously at his lip, unconsciously muffling his tiny, scared noises. It’s such a contrast to Damian as Tim has come to know him, all unruffled confidence and snobbery- or as Robin, steel-bright and immortal, the harsh cut of the city skyline as his backdrop. Asleep, terrified, he just looks like a boy. Tim doesn’t want to think about why his nightmares are so quiet; doesn’t want to think about how his grandfather would’ve reacted to finding him like this, a lifetime ago.

Acting on some unknowable, formerly buried brotherly instinct, Tim knees in front of him, reaches out. One hand goes to Damian’s shoulder, steadies his rocking. The other brushes his hair back from where his forehead is beading with sweat. He whispers soothing noises and watches Damian’s eyes open slowly, then all at once, guarded and very pale blue.

He squeezes the shoulder and retreats, wondering to what extent he’s fucked everything up.

“You’re okay,” he says, feeling increasingly stupid. Damian’s eyes are very big.

“I wasn’t scared, Drake,” he says, voice flat, as if all the emotion has been wrung out of it.

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s not- usually I'm in my room. Nobody hears from there.” _Oh_. Tim’s heart does a little stutter. But pity isn’t what Damian wants.

“Well, it’s a small apartment. This way you didn’t have to deal with like, Roy. You’re welcome.” Roy snores at his left, and Tim sends him a silent thank-you for proving his point. He’s not sure he’s ever been this close to Damian for so long, not without violence. They’re in uncharted territory, here.

Damian makes a small, displeased noise. “I suppose.” Tim stands up, a little unsteady.

“We’ve got food, if you’re hungry, but, uh Jason isn’t around to cook it. You could take your chances with me..?”

Damian looks up at him, distinctly unimpressed. “Unfortunately, I value the lining of my stomach. You could get me some coffee.”

Ouch. Fair. The kid shouldn’t have coffee, but he thinks of him curled up, whimpering, and can’t say no. He bet Damian _knows_ it, too, the bastard. Already he’s regained his composure, sits on the edge of the worn armchair like a king regarding his court. Tim gets him his damn coffee.

Cass and Steph come stumbling blearily towards the smell a few minutes later. They’d both borrowed Jason’s old stuff to sleep in, and he feels a ridiculous rush of affection for them, swallowed by shirts that must be six sizes too big. Steph looks toward the stove, hopefully.

Tim snorts. “You can try it. Jay’s out, and Damian’s already forbidden me from touching the thing.” Damian smirks, vindicated, seated on a barstool with his prized caffeine, feet dangling hilariously far from the floor. Steph makes a mournful noise, and Tim swears Cass makes her tummy rumble on _command_.

“You know,” says Steph, after a beat, “Roy can cook,”

“Mmrgh,” says Roy, six minutes later, half the Bats of Gotham looming around him, looking pathetic. “Okay, I'm up, I'm up. Jesus, what fuckin’ time is this?”

Steph shrugs, unrepentant. “It’s Monday. I have class in like thirty minutes. And I'm _hungry_.”

Roy stares at Tim, indignant, apparently chasing some form of justice. Tim, very corrupt, shrugs. “You aren’t paying rent, dude.”

Damian stiffens a little as Roy swears, sits up and heads for the stove, blearily. “I- I had forgotten it was Monday.”

A knock at the door. Which- okay. They don’t exactly get many visitors- visitors who _use the door_ , Tim amends. “I’ll get it,” he says, because it’s blatantly obvious that nobody else is going to volunteer. Also, he’s the closest thing to the owner, although he doesn’t actually pay rent, either.

He’s just wondering how Jason does actually pay the rent when he swings the door open, and oh, okay, that’s Bruce Wayne. _Bruce Wayne_ , not Batman, looking vaguely uncomfortable in the dingey corridor. Tim’s a little too much in shock to invite him in.

“Tim,” says Bruce, in a voice that’s just a little _fragile_. “I don’t mean to intrude. Dick told me Damian was over here. I'm just here to take him to school.”

Huh.

First off- oh yeah, Tim’d completely forgotten that Damian went to _school_. He doesn’t envy the poor teachers. It’s a stray thought in a mind that’s mostly just registering how long it’s been since he’s actually seen Bruce, face to face, how much of a miracle it is that the man’s stayed away for this long. He’s not even here to mess anything up- he’s here for _Damian_. What did Dick _say_ to him?

“Dad,” he says, choked. He can’t help it. Then Bruce’s arms are coming up around him in a hug, and, _oh._ Oh, he really has missed this. He hadn’t realised.

“You, ah, you should probably come in. He’s just eating, I think.” He struggles to regain his composure, leads Bruce down the hall to the kitchen. Where he was _probably_ expecting to find one of his runaway sons and maybe the other. Not, by the looks of it, his daughter, his sort-of-daughter, and _Roy Harper_.

“Ooh,” says Roy, gesturing with a spatula. “Look, kids, it’s The Man.”

Steph grins through a mouthful of toast. “Cass, say ‘fuck The Man’?”

“Fuck The Man,” parrots Cass, obediently.

“Okay, now say ‘eat the rich’-”

“Father,” says Damian, sounding a little guilty. “I'm sorry. I lost track of the time- I don’t have my things-”

“It’s okay, son. There’s your school bag and a change of clothes in the car.”

Damian nods. He is, Tim realises, hiding the mug of coffee behind his back.

“Want some eggs?” offers Roy.

Tim shakes his head, collapses into an armchair. Bruce starts when Roy looks at him expectantly. He’s _incredibly_ out of place, his shiny shoes squeaking on the dirty tile, and it’s kind of hilarious.

“Oh, no thank you. Um. I'm really just here for Damian.”

It _would_ sting, but Tim’s quite skilled at cutting through Bruce’s bullshit by now, and what he really means is: I really am on my very best behaviour and Alfred has probably bugged me to make sure I'm being polite and non-intrusive so I really really _really_ cannot stay. He figures. There’s no other plausible explanation for how _small_ Bruce looks, cowed, even taller than the rest of them as he is.

Idly, out of the corner of his eye, Tim watches Damian use the awkward standoff to chug the rest of his coffee, kick the empty mug behind his armchair.

“I'm ready.” Bruce gives another tiny, brittle nod, like he desperately wants to say something but can’t. He turns for the hallway, mechanical, Damian at his side.

Naturally, this is when a _thunking_ noise reverberates through the apartment as Jason swings down onto their fire escape from above, climbs breezily through the window. The apartment goes very still. Tim has a bizarre sense of déjà vu.

“You guys are up? I thought Bats were supposed to be evening people, the _fuck-_ ”

He cuts himself off.

Tim watches Bruce’s presence register. Jason’s walls go right up; then slowly, painfully come down again, like he’s willing himself not to attack.

“Oh. Old man.”

It’s not a greeting, barely even a statement. Bruce is frozen, ever-so vulnerable. Roy’s bodily twisted, facing him, a defensive stance. Cass and Steph look like they’re watching a game of tennis, albeit one with unusually high emotional stakes.

“Jason,” Bruce says, thickly. “I was just- I needed to take Damian to school.”

“Bullshit,” says Jason, high and unnatural in his mouth, and Tim flinches. Jason’s been so _stable_ recently, he’d almost forgotten the cold, heady anger beneath his surface. It has what he now recognises to be the green tinge of a Lazarus pit. “Bruce Wayne doesn’t do the school run. What, you just couldn’t resist yourself? Had to come see the freak show?”

Bruce is very pale. It is, after all, only the second time he’s seen his dead son, and Jason’s never been in the habit of making anything easy for him.

He half-closes his eyes. All of a sudden the man just looks tired and very, very human. “Sometimes I try and make time to drive Damian. Spending time with my sons is important to me.”

Jason’s head snaps up. Tim has no idea if Bruce has said the wrong thing, if it’s possible for him to say anything right.

“But- you are right. I wanted to see you. Both of you.”

There’s something dangerous in Jason’s smile, teeth flashing like cold steel. “We ain’t your fucking rich boy zoo, old man. Nobody invited you here.”

Cass speaks, and although she’s quiet, there’s a deadly seriousness to her tone that puts every eye in the room on her. “You did not invite me. Or Stephanie. Sometimes… I think family just happens.”

Jason’s teeth sink down on his lip, _hard_ , and Tim can’t bear it. Can’t bear to see him standing there, hunched in on himself and alone, all hard lines of defence. He crosses the room and puts his hand over Jason’s. The pulse there beats weak and fast, like a frightened animal.

“I'm sorry,” says Bruce, no excuse, no justification, no nothing. Just _I'm sorry_. Dick’s influence, no doubt. “We’ll go now.”

He walks out of the room, quick and measured, like a man trying awfully hard not to fall apart. Damian hesitates for a moment, says something that _might_ be a thank you, looks at Tim, eyes filled with something that _might_ be gratitude. He can’t quite tell. When the door clicks shut behind them tension diffuses out of the room all at once, dry as dust.

Steph keeps eating her toast. Jason breathes out. Tim stands there, marvelling at his universe, still intact despite the world’s best efforts.

\-----

Twelve hours later, Jason’s pulse has barely slowed.

 It’s the dead of fucking night and he’s on another fucking rooftop and he can’t fucking _breathe_. He’s not even entirely certain whereabouts he is in Gotham anymore, only that in the distance is the vague swish of oily water at the docks. He’s so _predictable_ , so stupid, back to his old haunts within two weeks, and he’d be sinking his hands into his hair and ripping it out if it weren’t for this useless fucking helmet.

His phone buzzes. It’s another text from Roy, who never texts twice. Somewhere inside him is an all-consuming vortex of guilt at what he’s doing to his friends, what he’s doing to Tim, but when he closes his eyes all he can see is Bruce is his kitchen, _his space_ , quiet and polite and unobtrusive, the way he’d forced himself to tear his gaze away from Jason, like he was something precious, something missing.

“ _I'm sorry,”_ he’d said; nothing more. Just that.

It’s not how Bruce is. The falsehood to it, the hope it imbues him with nonetheless, is tearing Jason apart from the inside.

He pulls off his helmet and buries his head in his hands. Sits there, folded up, and listens to the dirty water rise and fall.

Family just happens, says Cass. Happens when you turn up on the fire escape of a murderer and hope for the best, apparently. When two fucked up kids collide so hard it’s only the press of one’s body keeping the other from falling apart. When there’s a feral, hopeless tragedy of a boy loosening the tyres on your goddamn car, and you don’t take him to the police but into a home. Who the fuck does that, anyway? Jason scrunches his hands into fists and presses them against his eyes, watching red sunbursts appear at the pressure.

Family happens on a rooftop, when you come across a kid who means nothing to himself and everything to you, so goddamn lost he doesn’t even know who he is.

He hadn’t been able to stand the apartment for long after Bruce’d left, the residual good mood from his conversation with Babs dispelled entirely. He’s left the place before, when the walls press so hard down on him it’s hard to breathe, but if the texts on his phone are anything to go by, apparently this time is worrying, and he doesn’t know, maybe it is. There’re the beginnings of a fire licking up his spine, like he wants to start moving, maybe do something so stupid he forgets his own name, to exist only in chaos for a solitary, stark moment.

They say older siblings exist for a reason, and when he hears the familiar, vibrant footfall, there isn’t the surprise he expected, nor the nameless, scorching rage, backlit sickly green. He’s so tired all of a sudden. For an instant he doesn’t miss the bed in his apartment with Tim curled in it, but a larger room in a big house not far from here, walls lined with books that have a dead boy’s name written in them.

“Hey, Jaybird,” says Dick, wary and soft. “Those things got real bullets in them?”

Jason snorts. “Looking to find out?”

“Looking to see if it’s safe to get in range.”

“Coward.” He makes sure to face directly ahead so that Dick can’t see him smiling, just a little. It’s… been a while.

Dick drops, gracefully, to sit by him, legs kicking out over the edge of the roof. “Guess I’ll have to take my chances.”

“Guess you will.”

A beat.

“You’re alive,” Dick says, and swallows hard, as if the truth has been allowed to flow to him and recede again, as if there isn’t a square foot of bad blood and bullet scars between them even now.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Dick’s face is set like he has a piece to say, when Jason sneaks a look. “I used to think about it, you know, after enough time had passed that it didn’t hurt just to remember you.” He pauses. “Nothing’s ever clean cut in this business; everything’s messy. You figure death shouldn’t be any different. Maybe you’d really been snatched by ninjas, or you were secretly an immortal meta, or… whatever. When I couldn’t sleep at night, I’d picture you living it up a million miles away from this vigilante shit, exactly how it should be.”

“You never sleep at night.”

Dick smiles. “You got me there.”

“And then, lemme guess, you’d wake up the next day to go fight the Red Hood, just another day in the life, right?”

Dick sighs, digs his fingers in deep where they’re resting on his thighs. “Yeah. I was stupid. Bruce thinks so too, and he _hates_ feeling stupid. It hasn’t been at all easy for him.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. He knows Dick can see because he isn’t actually wearing his domino tonight, because he’s an idiot. “It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park on my end, pal.”

“I figured. I just- he’s really, really trying, okay? You should know that.”

Jason scuffs the heels of his boots along the rough brick like a little kid. “What if I do know that? What if I don’t want him to try?”

“He’s your dad, Jay,” and to have it aloud, in absolute certainty, breaks something in Jason probably beyond repair. “All that means is that he’s never gonna stop trying.”

Jason swallows, thickly. “Not gonna lie, if I’d ever thought this would happen, I was picturing more yelling.”

“You didn’t want this to happen. You didn’t want us to know.” The words are neutral but there’s grief weighty in Dick’s tone.

There aren’t any stars out; never are in Gotham. Jason fixes his gaze on the murky yellow moon. “I don’t know how to be what any of you people want. I don’t even know what I want to be, yet. I think I thought I’d get out of this city, make something real out of myself, come back in some distant future where Bruce is grey and retired and married off, and one day I’d go to his funeral like he went to mine.”

“That’s a little morbid, kid,” Dick’s tone is teasing but his eyes are bright and understanding, and perhaps he’d pictured that future too.

“Yeah, well, I was going through a whole thing.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“Am I murdering you right now? How does it _look_ like it’s going, dickwad?”

Dick laughs, and Jason hasn’t heard that sound in four years now, or thereabouts, and he really hadn’t thought he’d missed it until today.

“It’s not too late for the yelling, don’t get smart.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “I’d like to see you _try_.”

“None of that- what would the kids think?”

“Which ones? Has anyone told Bruce he has a problem yet?”

Dick sucks in a breath. “He’s good for Cass, she’s good for him. Steph doesn’t really consider him a dad, so she doesn’t count. Damian- well. He didn’t really get a choice with Damian.”

Jason badly wants to roll his eyes. “Yeah, and how do you think Damian feels about that? Jesus.”

Dick flinches. “Not like _that_ ,” he says, but there’s worry deep-rooted in his eyes (not wearing the domino either, they are all of them the stupidest family in Gotham tonight) that Jason didn’t put there. “I'm thinking you’d be a pretty good big brother, though.”

“I'm not-“ Jason starts, the old anger rising thick-blooded in his chest, but Dick is raising his hands, placating.

“You’re not,” he says. “I know, I know.”

There’s a pull in Jason’s chest like magnetism, inevitable. He nudges his shoulder against Dick’s and doesn’t pull away, just resting there, the pool of contact between their bodies like a black hole. He’s weightless for an instant, every bad thing in his body drawn away.

“Bruce misses you,” Dick says, simple, awful. “We all miss you, every day.”

Jason closes his eyes.

\-----

_‘it's reached the point in the night where I need to decide_

_whether I'm gonna fall asleep, or watch the sun rise.’_

\-----

He gets home to a mercifully empty apartment, for once. He’s taken his time, through the front door and up the stained, wobbly stairs like a normal goddamned person. When the door clicks open there are still dirty dishes in the sink and muddy footprints on the floor, but the only figure is Tim’s, slight and stark against the empty.

The dark circles under his eyes are more pronounced than usual, and it’s nearly three in the morning and Tim’s up just for him, just ‘cause he wasn’t here. The thought near crowds him out of his own mind with guilt and madness and love.

He takes a few steps forward then stops, biting his lip. He feels pinned in place by something awful and inevitable, maybe because it’s just the two of them after everything, maybe by the secrets that exist here even now.

Tim closes the gap. He’s pulled down into a kiss that’s searing, reverberating through his whole body, and his arms go up around Tim and bury in his hair, pull him closer, closer, until they’re a red-hot core of energy and the universe revolves just around them, for a change.

Tim pulls back slowly, like it hurts. “I love you,” he says, simple in the darkness. Jason’s world tilts ever-so-slightly on its axis.

“What,” he says, after a pause, instead of the thing that he should be saying. “Because I ran?”

Tim’s brow furrows. “No. Just now. Because you came back. You always come back.” A beat. “Although- I suppose it is your apartment.”

He knows already that Jason won’t say it back, and although his voice is casual, attempting humour, sharp tension crackles in the air around them. The silence stretches a moment too long.

Jason says, “I-” at the same time Tim says, “Jason.”

Then he finds he can’t say anything else.

“Jason. It’s alright.”

“It’s not.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I'm not. I-”

He can’t bring himself to say it. Tim breathes out all at once and turns for the doorway to their bedroom. He walks stiffly, like today’s been one of his bad days and Jason hasn’t even noticed. Guilt stabs through him like ice, and there’s blood roaring in his ears.

“I haven’t told you- there’s things you don’t know,” he says, desperate. Tim stops but doesn’t turn around.

“You never pretended to have told me everything,” he says, and Jason thinks that’s a patient smile in his voice, but not a happy one.

“I- before. You knew me before. You don’t get to _say_ things like that, alright, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just-”

“Jay,” Tim says again. “What?”

Jason squeezes his eyes shut. “This is so fucked up.”

“ _Jason_.” That’s the Red Robin voice. Jason misses the cool enclosure of his helmet, the way it puts the world behind a screen.

“Before,” he says again, slowly, like it’s being dragged out of him. “Before what happened with the Joker- happened. Before we met on that rooftop- we’d already _met_ , okay? You already knew who I was. And back when you had your memories you’d never’ve fucking _touched_ me. So don’t say that. Please.”

At some point Tim has turned around. He’s biting down hard on his lip.

“That’s not right,” he says, not blinking. “I’d- I’d have told Bruce.”

Jason wants to shut his eyes again but he can’t seem to make the muscles work, the world flooding in against his will. “You figured it out yourself,” he says. “You approached me. I don’t know why you didn’t say anything. We were-” and he curses the way his voice breaks, curses the awful ache at his throat, like how it feels when someone wearing armoured gauntlets has their fist there and is squeezing. “We were getting to be friends. I thought.”

Tim looks at him some more.

“The _point_ is,” he manages, strangled, “that you knew how I felt then and you would never have- you wouldn’t, okay? And I found you on that rooftop the first time and you were so new, and I thought I could do this but I _can’t_ , okay? It isn’t what you want so can you just stop- just _stop looking at me like that_.”

Tim flinches; the pit in Jason’s stomach threatens to swallow him up whole.

“I need a second,” Tim says. “I- I love you, but I need a second.”

He steps back like Jason’s moving towards him but Jason’s just standing there. Tim’s biting his lip again, and Jason wants to put his thumb there and stop it, but he doesn’t get to have that, doesn’t deserve to have that anymore.

“I-” Tim says, shaky and overwhelmed, and then he straightens his back a little and says, “Conner. Kon-El. I need- can you-”

It barely registers what Tim’s asking for before the boy is there. He does look a little like Clark, but not nearly as much as Jason had expected. He’s in a leather jacket over pajama pants and his eyes are very wide open, like he’d forgotten what Tim looked like until right now. His presence punches a neat, tidy hole through Jason’s gut.

He casts a glance at Jason, wary. “D’you need to go?” he asks, voice crackly with the vestiges of sleep.

Tim nods but he’s looking at Jason when he does it, and he doesn’t look angry or betrayed but just sad, sad like Jason’s falling apart in front of him and he’s all ran out of spellthread to stitch him back together.

They go. The last Jason sees of Tim he’s wearing a smile that maybe says I will see you soon, I love you, or maybe Jason’s just exactly as fucking crazy as he’s always been.

The empty apartment is cruel and dark around him. Jason sinks blindly into a sofa, swallowing hard. There’s a pounding ache at his temples, and green embers behind the light of his eyes.

He really misses his dad.

\-----

The Kents are decent people. Hard-working, kind, honest. This hypothesis is easily tested with the observable data at hand- Kon, who hasn’t heard anything off Tim in more than a year, now, dragged himself out of bed in the twilight hours because Tim _might’ve_ been upset. He didn’t insist on conversation during the flight back, and, once they got back to the farmhouse, he tried to offer Tim his bed, his own clothes to sleep in. Not once did he say “I missed you,” or “where have you been?” or “what’s going on?”, or anything else that threatened to manifest the prickle at the corner of Tim’s eyes into real, actual tears.

He’d set Tim down, ever-so-gently, made him up a camp bed, took one look at his crumpled face and pulled him into a hug. Made sure Tim was the first one to let go. Then got into bed quietly and clicked off the light.

Tim doesn’t deserve Kon. This is the essential fact of their friendship. From the moment Kon was made Tim has been owing him. He doesn’t remember all that much still, but crystalline in his mind is a kryptonite ring, pollen-clouded eyes on a familiar-unfamiliar face.

And then there’s Ma, who didn’t blink twice at the sight of Tim at her breakfast table, awkward in yesterday’s clothes but chatting with Kon a little now, about nothing, in the way that Kon can just calm him right down, open him right up. Instead of coffee she’d given him a mug of something vanilla, hot and sweet and milky, and drinking it on the porch with his best friend put a whole lot of things into perspective.

Alternate hypothesis: the Kents are probably the best people he knows, actually. He’s continually dwarfed by the magnitude of their kindness. It makes every problem he’s ever faced feel petty and small.

“Things are messed up,” he tells Kon. It’s eleven in the morning and they’re finishing chores, checking soil pH and moisture levels and all of these farm things that are really just chemistry, so Tim should know about, yet he doesn’t have a clue. Ma Kent has set him to weeding. He hasn’t managed to fuck that up yet. That he remembers.

“Sounds that way,” Kon says, tactile telekinesis ripping apart the soil at his feet in lieu of a plough. “All anyone from your weirdo family would tell me was that you were off duty because of this Joker attack. It wasn’t until Cass joined us in San Francisco that we heard anything concrete. Bart and Cassie were out of their _minds_.” He splits a packet of seeds and floats them to rest in the furrow.

Tim feels the bizarre urge to apologise, but Kon wouldn’t appreciate that. “Things weren’t exactly opportune on my end either, dude. I lost everything- I was a blank slate for a while. Nobody told me I had been Robin, or that Bruce was Batman. I had to figure it out for myself _again_.” Kon is smirking at him. “What?”

His eyes flash with fondess. “Nah, nothing. Just- Tim Drake: had to figure out Batman’s identity _twice_ while the rest of Gotham puzzled over if the butts matched.”

Tim elbows him, almost falls into the row of potatoes when the action drags a wave of psychosomatic pain up his legs. “Don’t even _go_ there. You’re joking, but it was real for me. Anyways, uh, I was trying to figure out who I used to be, and I ran into Jason. And he helped me figure it out. And now we’re a thing? But-”

“Woah,” says Kon, raising his hands. “Jason? _The_ Jason?”

“…Yes?”

“Tim, dude, he’s dead. I'm like ninety percent sure.”

“Oh, right.” Tim pauses. “Yeah, uh. He _was_? Just for a bit.”

Kon looks skyward, like he’s praying for patience. “Okay, yeah, sounds like things are pretty messed up. You’re right.”

“Oh, no. That’s not the messed-up part. Though it was pretty dramatic.”

“Tim, nothing has ever happened in Gotham without being dramatic. It’s like a legal prerequisite.”

“Oh, shut your small-town mouth.” Tim looks down, trying to vocalise what he’s feeling. “When I called you, it was because- look, he’d just told me that we’d known each other before I lost my memories. I never mentioned that to you?”

Kon pulls a _sorry_ face, accompanied by the snip of shears as he clips away the diseased foliage.

“Yeah, didn’t think so. But he says that he’d- he’d wanted to be with me even back then-” he thrusts his face into his palms and groans. “This is so awkward, I'm sorry.”

“It’s what I'm here for. Also, you have mud on your, uh, everything.”

Tim takes a deep breath. “He’d wanted to be with me then, and I pretty firmly said no, which I _don’t remember_. And now he clearly thinks that he’s never going to be what I want, that he’s just a coping mechanism, and I _don’t know_ what I think. If the real Tim felt one way, and I feel another, then who the hell am I? _Fuck_.”

Kon puts an arm around him, just traces of tactile telekinesis stroking soothing circles into Tim’s back. He wonders for the millionth time how he could ever have forgotten this, all the wonderful people he loves.

“ _I_ think,” Kon says, “that we should go in and have some lemonade. And you should shower. And you can take as long as you need to think about it, and in the meantime, we can go to the Tower and you can be with your friends again. That a plan?”

He’s been thinking it for the past eight hours, so he might as well express it. “You’re more than I deserve, Conner Kent.”

“Ah-ah.” Kon waves a finger. “No bat-melodrama on this farm. Not while there’s weeding to do.”

Tim grins at him, endlessly thankful, and hides his slightly watery eyes behind the leafy fronds of carrot-tops.

\-----

All Jason sees is green on green on green.

There’s a cold, numbing hush cast over the sharp edges of his mind, and while you’d expect the chill to be welcoming, given the fire raging at his pulse points, it feels uglydirtywrong. He’s only vaguely aware of the set of his body, like his proprioception has been turned all the way down. He knows somewhere that he’s hungry, that he’s stiff, but his mind and body are trapped thick in the honey Lazarus-scent and he can’t-

He can’t.

Noises, the thudding sound of wood. Echoes in the corners of his hearing. Obscured by the roar of green flame.

Nothingness, for a while. You can have too much peace, like anything else, and his mind seeps away in the blankness.

Is this how it felt for Tim? Short dark pinprick, a whole new lifetime of empty.

It’s not an empty life for Jason, here and now, it’s an excess, a too-much too-great throbbing of knowledge beyond the cold places in his mind that are in thinking distance. Far, far too much life for a dead boy.

Sudden, flaring, awful. His unblinking vision is filled with light, crowded with silhouettes. A low rumble of sound, barely recognisable as human speech.

“-Jesus.”

A swallow. “Sweartogod I just found him like this. I was looking for Tim, but he’s not here.”

“I’ve never seen…”

“Nothing like this? Not even early on?”

“Less so then. As he calmed down he’d space out more, but Jesus, never…”

Choked, harsh, scaping. “His eyes are so _green_. That’s not natural.”

“No, it’s… no.”

“We need- we need Dick. Bruce.”

“He wouldn’t want-“

“What the fuck else are we supposed to do? Look at him!”

Swallow. “I’ll call. Should we move him?”

“I- _fuck_. I don’t know. Jesus, I have a class in twenty minutes.”

“You could call Tim?”

“His phone’s on the bench. Oh my god, what if something’s happened?”

“Jay will tell us. We just need- c’mon, buddy-”

Jason feels his body flinch at the contact, although his mind is still far away, in the cold green fire. The dial tone of a phone sounds, on speaker.

“Roy? Don’t hear from you much these days. Everything alright?”

“Dick. It’s Jason. He-”

Desperation, pain, a quick little intake of breath. “What’s happened? Is he okay?”

“Steph found him in the apartment. He’s spaced out, all the way gone- his eyes are glowing, Dick, bright green. Tim isn’t here. He needs medical care, but I couldn’t think of anything that would explain this to a hospital. I don’t know-”

“Can you get him here?”

“Where’s here? He’s not responding well to touch.” Jason senses hands around his ribs and hears himself groan, as if through a thick veil.

“The Cave. Under the manor. We’ve got just about a full hospital down here, minus the staff. We- we can look after him, please-”

“Relax. He won’t be happy, but it’s your call. I don’t know how to get him over- there’s only his bike here.”

A beat. “Alfred can pick you up. He says he’ll be over in ten. Bruce is in his study, I'm going to tell him what’s going on- don’t end the call, yeah?” The voice is wavery and frantic with worry.

“Not going anywhere.” Then, quieter, a murmur: _Out of my hands now_. A hand comes down on the top of Jason’s head, gentle, caressing, and this time his body doesn’t flinch away.

“You can make your class, if you want. I’ve got it from here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Harper. I'm the one who found him like this, anyway.”

A grumble. “Yeah, I had a feeling you’d say that. You bats-”

“Please. I'm _barely_ a bat.”

“Heh. That’s what Jason says.”

Awful, tense silence. Then:

“Roy,” icy, “if you know something about what’s happening, you really need to tell us. It could be important.”

Another weighty pause. Sigh. The image of a figure, tall in red, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“If I had to guess? When he crawled out of that Lazarus Pit, he was spitting with rage. It kept him going- maybe it was why the resurrection worked. Now that anger is gone, and his emotions are everywhere- maybe it’s like withdrawal.”

The hand leaves his hair, and the coldness soaks in again.

“I don’t know what a Lazarus Pit is.”

“Bruce and Dick will. Look, I should go, these really aren’t my secrets to tell-”

“Don’t you _dare._ ”

“Steph.” Hands up, placating. “He won’t forgive me for this. I can’t help anymore. I need to go.”

One of the figures- _Roy_ , Jason thinks dimly, _Roy, Roy, Roy_ \- moves towards the fire exit. The other makes no move to stop him, and nobody says anything else for a good long time after that.

\-----

_‘but who's gonna push my wheelchair around when I get sick?_

_God forbid I ever stop feeling sorry for myself, for being selfish.’_

\-----

It’s early evening when Bart arrives.

There’s a pleasant, heady burn in Tim’s muscles that only comes from honest hard work, not artificial strain at the gym or the cruel ache of a night on Gotham’s rooftops. He almost never gets to feel like this- the evidence of his labours right in front of his eyes, not sinking deep into the cesspit of his city. They’re out on the porch again, Kon with physics homework spread out around him, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth with concentration.

“That’s six, not four,” he says, absentmindedly, feels Kon’s mock-irritated scowl burn a little hole in the back of his neck. He watches pink streak across the watery sunset, the light golden around them.

“I meant to ask- have you been thinking about what you want to do, outside Superboy? Just- I think this is the only schoolwork I’ve ever seen you do.”

Kon shrugs easily. “Not physics, that’s for sure.” He flashes a grin. “It doesn’t even apply to me. But, uh, I'm not sure. College sounds cool and all, parties and big cities, but,” he looks around him, fondness soft in his eyes, “I'm not certain I wouldn’t just end up right back here.”

Tim considers. “You’d do well at college. But realistically- you’re still, what, six? You aren’t supposed to want to be independent yet.”

Kon rolls his eyes. “This six-year-old has saved your life _many_ times, so don’t give me that. And I'm not sure anybody else is seeing it like that. Ma- Ma wants me to go. Clark thinks it’s a good idea. And I- I don’t know, man.”

Tim takes a sip of the iced tea in front of him, so sweet it makes his teeth ache momentarily. “That’s alright. Hey, for all we know, you’re immortal, and you’ve got forever to make up your mind.”

Kon pulls a face. “Urgh, don’t remind me. Cassie went through this morbid thing where she wouldn’t stop lamenting about how we were going to outlive everybody we know. Well, nobody knows how Bart’s lifespan works, but, uh. You bats aren’t actually immortal, no matter how hard you act like it. We all got reminded of that pretty hard.”

Tim bites his lip, feels the usual surge of guilt. “You have no proof that I'm not immortal.”

“Oh, I’ll _give_ you proof-” Tim dodges the first lunge and then the second, jumping up and swinging out of reach with the frieze beam, onto the roof. It’s hot to the touch, baked by the sun. Kon snorts and turns to his homework, although he could easily fly up. Tim goes back to watching the skyline, sees it streak with crackling orange lightning.

 _Familiar_ , crackling orange lightning. He smiles a little wider. Bart’s entrance _whooshes_ backwards the rows of corn on either side of the pathway. Which, by the looks of it, probably hadn’t been a pathway before Bart.

Kon barely looks up. “Dude, I have a phone.”

“Do you know how awful phones are? The signal has to go all the way up to the satellite and then _all_ the way back down again! That’s _years_!”

“Mm-hm,” says Kon, and Tim can hear the smile in his voice. “So what did you need to talk to me about?”

“Oh,” Bart says, ducking his head. “Well I just wanted to see if you would play videogames with me. But we can talk about Titans things!! Cassie says she’s worried I'm increasingly invested in my intellectual abilities because I was never able to develop an actual coping mechanism because I never had a childhood, but I'm pretty sure she just wants me to stop mentioning useful statistics when she’s trying to formulate a game plan.”

Kon says, “Right,”

Bart says, “But the University of Philadelphia _did_ publish a relevant study about three years ago that I think could be used to refute that theory, because they say,” and it’s pretty unintelligible for about thirty seconds after that, and Tim is _trained_ to speak Bart. Kon says ‘I understand’ and ‘mm-hmm’ at the appropriate moments, so he’s probably doing a better job.

“Butwhatdoyouthink?” Bart finishes.

“Me? I'm just the Smallville kid. I’ll let you know when I get more academic than this homework. But-” and his voice here is admirably even- “I reckon if Robin were here, he’d say that an unhealthy coping mechanism is still a coping mechanism, and while you do need to address any mental health issues that may be present, it’s also very important that you remain functional for the purpose of staying alive.”

Tim says “Really?” and curls his upper body down over the side of the roof. He can see the glimmer in Kon’s eye but Bart’s facing the other way, so he can’t gauge his reaction. “I think he’d say ‘who died and made Cassie boss?’”

Bart vibrates on the spot for a second, and Tim thinks the buzzing sound might be ‘ _holy shit holy shit_ ’ over and over or possibly maniacal laughter, it’s always hard to tell. Then he’s spinning faster than Tim can follow and his forward momentum carries Tim off the roof, then both of them over the porch fence to collapse in the dirt a couple of feet below.

“Ow,” says Tim, belatedly, watches Bart zip up and down the steps, looking at Kon’s face and then Tim’s and then Kon’s again. Truth is, his psychosomatic pain isn’t bothering him at all, hasn’t been since he woke up this morning.

Bart comes to an abrupt halt in front of him. “Hi,” he says, an expression Tim can’t quite decipher. However long of a year it’s been for Tim, it’ll have been considerably longer for Bart. “I'm really really glad that you’re here and presumably at least remember Kon if not the rest of us, and that you’re not an invalid, and I really have missed you a lot,” and here Tim thinks the brief phantom pressure he feels may be a lingering hug, “but at the same time not having you around caused me to deal with a lot of the issues I have as a person, and I'm feeling a little disrupted, so I hope you won’t mind if I just take.” He swallows. “A minute.”

Whoosh.

Tim hauls himself back up the stairs. Kon is putting away his homework.

“He’ll be alright. He’s changed a bit.”

Tim closes his eyes. “You’ve changed a bit, too. So have I. Nothing’s going to be the same.”

Kon looks at him, evenly. “Where’d be the fun if it was?”

The pressure he feels now is a lot firmer and lasts for a lot longer. That’s a Kon hug- he really didn’t used to get many of those. He’s not sure if that’s ‘cause he’s different or ‘cause Kon’s different, but he’s not complaining either way.

When he pulls back and opens his eyes Bart is there. He looks different, somehow- hair a little wilder than usual, or maybe he’s been crying.

“Hey,” Tim says. “I really did miss you, too. I'm so glad I remember you now.”

Bart’s trembling, or maybe it’s just tiny, aborted movements.

“Do you have enough controllers for us to all play videogames?” he asks Kon, huge amber eyes still fixed on Tim.

“Yeah,” says Kon, “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

\-----

It’s unsettling: how calm he feels waking up in the safety of the Batcave after all this time.

He groans, presses a hand to his forehead, the splitting pain there. A sort of hangover, as after any other excess.

It looks- it’s not dissimilar. The monitor is larger and sleeker, and the glass uniform cases are numerous- Bruce has a big family nowadays, as Jason has experienced firsthand. The location of the medbay hasn’t changed- a sheltered, hidden segment of cave, rock formations swirled into the ceiling above.

So. Tim, gone. Then his head, messy. Then Steph- Roy? He wonders dimly if his eyes are still glowing. Alfred coming in the Bentley- _fuck_ , Alfred. Something like apathy, then the very opposite. Here and now. Bed. Bruce in a chair, by his bedside, looking at Jason with old eyes, wide and blue, like he’s the only colour in a black-and-white world.

“Fuck _off_ ,” mumbles Jason, feeling reasonably well caught up. He doesn’t have the strength to shut his eyes or turn his head to the side so he has to sit there and watch as Bruce’s walls slide up, as he tucks back into himself.

“Your vitals are fine,” he says, a little wobbly, but only detectable ‘cause Jason’s _known_ him. “We’ve been rehydrating you- you have my word that’s all the needle is.”

Jason is going to rip it out anyway. Really, he is. Once he can move his arm and everything. Once he can summon back that green fire, that awful knife-blade smile.

The Pit isn’t _supposed_ to desert him like this. The embers have all but burnt themselves out, leaving him cold; his dad won’t stop _looking at him_.

Then: over Bruce’s shoulder, two-o-clock. Alarm bells start ringing. Aw, shit, he has bigger problems.

“Master Jason,” Alfred says, steely. “So good to see you conscious. The fact you aren’t bioluminescent is also a _marked_ improvement.”

Jason bites the inside of his cheek. “Alfie.”

Alfred’s eyes flash, something like rage, something like exhaustion. Nobody says anything for a tight second. Then, well: Jason’s never been so relieved to see his big brother before.

“Hey,” says Dick, making Bruce flinch a little. He mustn’t have slept for a while- it takes a lot to get the drop on Batman. “Why’re we crowding the invalid? Give the man some space. You doing okay, Jace?”

“Peachy,” Jason mutters. He thinks his panic must show on his face because Alfred steps away with a huff, and even Bruce moves back a little.

This is insane. More than that, it’s ridiculous. He- he’s the _Red Hood_. He’s nobody’s fucking son. Nobody gets to tuck him into bed and stick needles into him and keep a silent vigil at his bedside. That’s not- he isn’t-

“Hey, little wing,” says Dick, warm and sad. “Take a breath, yeah?”

He’s sick and twisted and pathetic ‘cause he _does_. Takes breath after shaky breath in time with Dick until his heartbeat’s regular and he feels halfway to a normal person for once. He uses the degree of movement he’s regained to drop his head into his hands.

That’s Dick’s hand, warm, on the back of his neck. Rubbing little circles against the sensitive vertebra there, pressure edging on pain but never quite crossing over. It’s how Tim does it. Jason wonders if they learnt from each other, if Dick’s hands have been tracing his spine, phantom, this whole time.

“Steph says,” he says, in a voice that’s waving every possible white flag- t _his is not an attack_. “Steph says that Roy says, heh, it’s like middle school. He said that you’re like this because of a Lazarus Pit.”

The beginnings of a wildfire rise in his lungs, smoky. “That I'm _like this_?”

Dick hands come off his neck as he raises them in a guesture of surrender. “Comatose, dumbass. Or, y’know, alive. Either.”

He breathes out all at once and the embers die. Suddenly, the path of least resistance stands out in gold to him, oh, so appealing. “I- yeah. What’s wrong with me- that’s the Pit. ‘Least, the Pit is the bits that haven’t always been there. But it ain’t how I'm here.”

Bruce speaks in a scratchy hush. Jason honestly had forgotten he was there. “How are you here?”

Inhale, exhale. Steady. “What, gospel truth? You buried me about a couple of miles that way, right?” He points vaguely. “Made me up nice and pretty for the viewin’, but it didn’t fix any of that damage deep down, yeah? Wanna know how I know?”

“Jason,” says Bruce, and up until this week he’d have mistaken that for a warning, but it’s not, it’s a plea.

“Yeah, yeah, old man,” he says, the vindictive joy gone out of it. “It’s ‘cause a few months later I woke up down there and dug myself out. Lungs still filled with soot, caved-in skull and all. Anything I'm missing?”

Dick makes a little choked-up noise. Bruce is a silent, motionless, _thing._ The quiet stretches heavily around them.

“Fractured femurs,” Bruce says. “Ruptured spleen. Serious internal bleeding. Crushed Achilles’ tendons.”

Dick puts a hand on his arm and he stops. Jason wants to be sick.

“Right,” he says, so immutably tired. “So I wandered ‘round Gotham like a rabid dog until the League found me. Then I turned feral in a whole new way. _Then_ they trained me to kill you, so I came to Gotham and put a bomb under your car, but, hey, it wasn’t as fun as I’d thought it’d be. And here we are.”

He hopes they can’t hear the way his voice is choked with tears. The pressure at his throat is almost insurmountable.

“Here we are,” says Bruce, so goddamn stiff. “You know- _Jason_.” There it is, again; he says Jason’s name like it’s everything in the whole world. “You know it doesn’t matter to us how you came back. I’ve missed- I always wanted to tell you that I'm so _sorry-_ ”

His voice breaks off. Jason stares. He can’t do this. He actually, physically, cannot do this. He hasn’t got the fire left.

Bruce must see the surrender in his face. “Go to sleep, Jay,” he says, awfully quiet, and Jason closes his eyes to save Bruce’s grief from an audience. To save himself from having to watch Bruce’s tears.

\-----

Tim wakes missing the feel of Jason around him, his honey-smoke scent. When he opens his eyes Kon is still snoring, one arm hanging over the side of his bed, but Bart is sitting upright, dressed, amber eyes luminous.

“Morning,” says Tim, after a beat, still sleepy and slow.

“Morning,” says Bart.

“You look like you’ve been up for a while.”

“Almost, like, twenty minutes. It’s been really boring.”

“Yeah?”

“There were some wildfires west of here I was helping out with, but that took, like, _no time_. And then I did Mrs Kent’s weeding. And then cleaned the barns. And then-”

Tim grins at him, sleepily, and turns his head to bury his face back into the lumpy pillow. Jason’s been awful for his sleeping schedule- he used to manage on almost nothing, but now, well.

Jay’s pretty good motivation for staying in bed awhile.

He didn’t bring his suit with him or anything when he left, and he’s never left one at Kon’s, not even one of his old Robin uniforms.  He lets Kon fly him over to the tower in an old pair of scraggy joggers, an old Nirvana tee. Bart streaks by beneath them, the familiar orange lightning still mesmerising to watch, after all this time. When they’re almost all the way there, Kon stops dead, swears under his breath.

“Kon?”

“Cassie’s seen us. Brace.”

Tim knows he should be worried, but can’t prevent the bright grin that breaks over his face. Something streaks from the tower, glittering and all-powerful in the morning sun. She heads directly for Kon and Tim, not slowing down, and he’s just thinking maybe he should have braced a little when Kon tosses him _forward_ , and the new figure slams into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. They tumble through the bright sky together, and it takes Tim a couple more seconds to work out that this is a hug, that they’re _hugging_.

Oh, Cassie. He belatedly brings his arms up around her and squeezes as hard as he can.

“ _Fuck you_ , Timothy Drake,” she says, muffled, into his shoulder. He makes a sympathetic face, although she won’t be able to see it.

“Hey, hey. You’re alright.”

“You won’t be alright ten seconds from now when you _hit the pavement_ ,” she says, viciously, and pulls away from him, but her eyes are crinkled and sparkly.

He considers. “Well, no, but-“

“For the record,” says Conner, floating next to them, lazily. “It’s her call. If she drops you, she drops you. I'm not catching you and landing myself on the couch.”

Tim makes big eyes at him, but he remains firm, arms folded. He turns to Cassie, whose cheeks are streaked a little with tears. She grins at him, watery.

“I suppose you can live. But if you think you’re here to go on a mission in your condition-“

“I’ve been training for months! I'm fine!”

“Patrolling?”

“Well, no, but-“

“Yeah, case closed, batboy. We’ll let you make us snacks if you wanna help out so bad,” Kon says, smirking like nobody’s business.

They begin drifting towards the tower as Tim’s eyes narrow, balefully. “I remember when we first met, and you’d _piss yourself_ whenever I mentioned Batman. You used to be so _intimidated_.”

“Nah,” says Kon, nonchalant, “never happened.” Tim grinds his teeth.

As they glide toward the roof, there’s a fizz of yellow electricity, and Bart is standing there, waiting for them.

“Hey guys!! I'm really glad you didn’t decide to kill Tim. Also I heard someone say something about snacks, so I got snacks!” He thrusts a paper bag towards them. “The others have started without you. They said we might need a minute to hug it out but crime is still happening even if we’re having Emotions.”

Cassie mutters something unintelligible, setting Tim down. “Who needs ‘em anyway. We’ve got the core Young Justice right here!”

“Yeah, maybe” says Tim, “but you’re kidding yourself if you think Kon could still get away with that much leather.”

“Oh, I _know_ he can,” says Cassie, eyes glittery. Kon turns bright red and buries his head in his hands.

He’s really, really missed his friends.

\-----

Jason’s _dying_ for a fucking smoke. Excuse his pun, except not really.

An ambiguous, shifting amount of time has passed- he really has no idea how long he’s been here, semi-conscious. He’d followed through on his promise and ripped out the cannula in his hand about an hour back, disgustingly reassured by the absence of blaring alarms, the muted freedom of self-destruction allowed to him. He’s been up, unsteady, ever since, exploring the cave: all the ways it’s changed and all the ways it has persisted, unyielding to time or tragedy.

It’s around three, prime Bat hours, and Bruce has left the computer logged on, so he amused himself for a while reading files, the defining tales of Babs and Tim and the brat. Old cases, mysteries when he went into the ground, now solved and done and over with. But then he makes the mistake of logging out to see if his old account info will still work. It doesn’t.

Jason wonders when _that_ happened. The days following his death, a violent, angry, purge? The ugly depths of Bruce’s grief, maybe, or with the appearance of Tim and the signalling of a new life, new hope? Or maybe only weeks ago, when it was ground into Bruce’s mind, brutal and ugly, that the boy who was once a son is now only a threat, that emotion has always been a weakness and love has always been a mistake.

Except. He’s not a threat, is he? Bruce trusts him in the cave by himself, with his own children, even. There is his uniform, out on a counter by the medbay, for him to wear and escape into the night if so he chooses- he can only assume the exits would open for him, although every code he knows will be defunct.

_Not his guns, though, because Bruce thinks the part of him that is ugly and twisted and violent can be isolated and removed so easily._

The spark doesn’t catch; the green fire remains dormant behind his eyelids. When he sees his reflection in the dark of the monitor screen, his eyes are only a wet blue, the eyes of a child. He’s scared of what that means. All it leaves him is tired.

Eventually he finds himself leaning up against the display case with his old uniform in it, a thousand bloody tears in it meticulously stitched. A week ago it would’ve made him want to burn the whole city down.

Now he wants a cigarette, and he wants to hear from Tim, and he wants Roy to be here. Roy’s not complicated, he wouldn’t make Jason talk about things he has no interest in voicing aloud. But it’s just him in the dark and quiet of the cave, and he’s not sure if he hasn’t been this lonely in a while, or if he’s just comprehending the loneliness for the first time.

Roy told his family about the Pit, knowledge he’d only entrusted to Tim.

But Tim wasn’t here.

Jason has no idea how this resurrection thing works, has been running on green fire and a promise as long as he can really remember. But the fire is- it’s out. Maybe his body shut down because what was keeping it alive ran its course. Does that mean he’s free, now, that there’s grace within him again, the capacity for confession, to be forgiven?

Does that mean he could be dead by now, if he hadn’t been found?

He misses Roy. The monitor in front of him flares into life, signalling an incoming call to the cave that’s presumably also headed to Bruce’s earpiece. It’s from Tim.

“ _Hey, B. Man, I, uh- I haven’t used this frequency in a while. I'm calling from Titans Tower, which you probably knew. Just to let you know that I'm headed back, that I’d like to stop by the manor, if that’s okay with you? I’ve missed you guys. Uh, Red Robin out.”_

Jason stares ruefully up at the ceiling, where the bats hang and sway. Has Tim messaged him about coming home? Who knows; he doesn’t have his phone with him here. Maybe not. Maybe he’s scared Tim away for good this time and Tim will go home to the manor and never look back, never think about the cramped, shitty apartment ever again.

There’s no fire but instead an ancient, familiar throbbing behind his eyes. Here is how anger felt, before, then, here is how it broiled in the mind of a boy, not the killer he became. It’s cleansing, redemptive; he cannot stand to be in this space a second more. Doesn’t want to be here, waiting for Bruce to come back, or at home, waiting for Tim. He wants his bike, to breathe easy in the cold rushing air before he finds his way back to them, an inevitability.

He digs one of Tim’s old Red Robin bikes out of storage; the Cave exit peels open for him, as he’d known it would.

\-----

_‘let's keep it quiet, keep me honest, keep me true,_

_keep me in love, keep me believing it's with you.’_

\-----

Tim knows something is wrong before he steps into the apartment, before he’s turned his key in the lock, before he’s traversed the narrow hall or the treacherous staircase leading up to it. Dread settles cold in his gut before he makes it to the building. There’s a deadness to the air, this flat, blank feeling that could never exist within radius of Jason.

He’d cleared off already when Tim had stepped into the manor, at six in the morning, blooming with new light and hope and purpose. Alfred had been in bed- Tim gathered it had been a rough night- so he’d shown himself down to the cave, where Bruce had just returned to and was stripping out of the harsh lines of the suit, vulnerable in the soft, black underclothes.

They’d hugged like that, aching and bruised in the shallow light of the monitor. Then, while logging tonight’s missions (although he isn’t as great at multitasking as he’d like you to believe), Bruce had filled him in on what he’d missed in just a week away from this city. Jason’s seizure, Roy’s flight, the tired, tender way Jay had spoken, when he’d awoken, like all the fight had bled out. His simple, silent disappearance tonight. Tim had turned it over in his mind, made Bruce some coffee and left, unwilling to promise any return or compromise, although both will come, in time.

He’s got other things to worry about. His heart _aches_ , unpoetically but in ways that make him tired, grouchy- he wants to see Jason again, can’t focus on much else. There’s unspoken apologies at his throat, belief in love he wants to kiss into reality. Tim has never finished with marvelling that he’s allowed to _have_ this, and he isn’t about to let his tattered memory lose it for him when it’s how he found it in the first place. He feels altogether firmer in himself, refreshed by time spent with people who have always had exact confidence in who he is, even when they didn’t know his name. He’s going to put things right, between him and Jay, Jay and the family, hell, Roy and Bruce, if it takes that. He’s got to have faith that he is allowed _all of it_ \- Hood and family both.

The ugly, heavy dread follows him all the way up to their front door, to the sickly promise of smell that hangs around it. He opens it, robotically- Tim Drake has had a lot of practice with disaster, with hearing the bed news first. There’s no domino on his face but there’s Red Robin in his stance and already it’s on damage control mode, pushing any fear or grief downwards.

There are-

they’re _everywhere._

The walls are sticky with blood and feathers. The smell is tangy and pungent. Tim feels his heart drop into the cavity where his spleen used to be, his eyes squeezing very tightly closed, for a single, cowardly second.

The apartment is strung with dead birds.

On the wall by the TV, in more blood, a crude cartoon. Tim does not allow himself the instinct of nausea- he can barely make it out without tears blurring his eyes.

A Robin-figure and a clown-figure, facing each other. The Robin says _oh, Mr. J, how I’ve missed you._

The clown says _me too, kid. Never fear! My aim will be better next time!_

His phone is on the counter, where he left it a week ago. Except-

the lockscreen is Jason, crudely bound, seething at the camera with something beyond absolute loathing, something a little more like fear.

Tim makes it to the sink, just, before vomit rises in his throat. It splatters over the finch there, lying stiff in a pool of its own blood. It stares at him, dead and baleful.

He stands, mechanically, and picks up his phone again. Makes two calls, one of which goes to voicemail. Walks into the bedroom, swallowing down bile at the fresh death-scent, slides back the hidden panel in the cupboard where his uniform is. Red Robin leaves via the fire exit, doesn’t close the window behind him, lets the death seep out after him and over the whole city, let Joker know that he’s coming.

Steph finds him at the old carnival, doesn’t bother disguising her footsteps. He isn’t. He works his way across the dilapidated rides, the freak shows, the funhouses, and she works backwards and meets him in the middle. Cass is probably nearby- those two won’t approach serious missions without each other by choice. Occasionally he hears the soft whisper of her wings on the air, a flash of black in his peripheral vision. It’s almost a comfort. Babs probably known to send them to him before he’d finished speaking. He trusts her with all he has to be tearing the city apart right now, every camera and every piece of technology hers to command. Hunting down a motorbike or a flash of white hair or a cruel, cruel smile.

The next place on his list is the corner of Crime Alley where Jason Todd was found. But Tim’s worked his way around to the waterfront, and from here you can just see the low, looming silhouette of the line of warehouses he and Jay had danced across, lifetimes ago.

But that’s a memory of Hood, of course, not of Jason. Back when all the lines were simple and brutal and clear-cut, when Tim was the broken one. When it was the two of them holding each other together in a world that didn’t seem to care, as opposed to a world that cares far too much, Bruce and Dick and Steph and all of them, now, for this to end in anything other than tears. Joker doesn’t care much about the Red Hood- that’s evident from the scene at the apartment. Jason’s only a dead little bird to him.

But- here’s the thing-

(and here Tim’s heart stutters with the vile enormity of it all-)

the Joker has always rather liked Jason in a warehouse.

Biting back the rising nausea, Tim sprints to his bike like a wild thing, more bird than boy, perhaps. There’s the dim sounds of Steph and Cass behind him, noises of their confusion, but he doesn’t have the capacity to answer. Most of the training Bruce had not been able to turn into instinct is gone from his head, and as a result there is no voice in his mind reminding him to be calm, be prepared, be anything more than _moving_ , through the night, as fast as he can.

He doesn’t aim inland, for the bridge over the murky bay, instead pitching his bike as fast as he can through the mouldering wooden barrier, towards the dark, slick water. The mechanisms he remembers building himself click into action, tires flipping sideways, the revealed motor powering him forwards, over water, towards where he needs to be.

There’s nothing but adrenaline in his veins and it powers through him, tearing away the obscuring mists in his brain with every heartbeat. Memories come over him like a flood, jumbled and terrifying and all-consuming. He is five and a poor boy’s parents are falling in the circus; falling down, down, down. He is eight and perched on a gargoyle with a camera in his hands, he is thirteen and Bruce Wayne is Batman and needs help, someone’s, anyone’s: his. Nightwing teaches him on a moving train, Kon is entranced by Poison Ivy in front of his eyes, behind his eyelids, with the sound of nothing but water pounding and blood rushing in his ears. He is speeding across the bay; he is in the Robin costume for the first time; he is staring, disbelieving at Damian from across the Batcave; he is woozy from a syringe the Joker has slipped into his neck.

Steph kisses him; Lady Shiva lunges; the Red Hood appears, across from him on a rooftop, and Tim thinks _I know exactly who you are_.

He is this-Tim and other-Tim, Timothy Jackson-Drake and Robin, red or otherwise, he is Caroline Hill and Alvin Draper and Mr. _fucking_ Sarcastic.

His bike rears as he reaches the other side, the row of warehouses looming, and throws him into the air, over the barrier. He lands in a crouch; straightens, his cape falling around him.

In his memory, his _last_ memory, the Joker’s scent pervades, sickly-sweet, and here it is in reality too. It emanates from the only lit warehouse. He doesn’t know how long it will take the others, but clicks the tracker on his thigh into life anyway, ever-hopeful. Grapples to the roof, kicks in a vent as quietly as he can, terrified of every noise and every wasted instant. Crawls until he finds a downwards-facing vent over the main space of the warehouse, heart in his throat.

He’s directly above them. Green and white and black. Jason is sagging, but still conscious. He’s in his uniform but unarmed. Joker is talking, like every bad dream Tim’s ever had.

“ _So, sweetling_ ,” he says, like nails on chalkboard. “ _It’s up to you. My little bird. Y’see, your Uncle Joker- oh, don’t make that face, brat- your Uncle Joker really is a fan of poetry._ Ooh, heard this one the other week- ‘there once was a man from Nantucket-‘ no?”

He whirls, unexpectedly, slaps Jason in the face. Tim watches blood ooze from the split lip.

“ _Ooh, birdie,”_ an awful, wheezing chuckle. “ _So, in the interests of poetry, I think it’s only fair to let you choose the next bit. What’s it gonna be, sport?”_ He holds something aloft, glass, sparkling in the soft light. “ _My own special formula? Or would you prefer we try the whole warehouse sketch again- take two?”_

Tim’s struggling to take a breath. That’s- that’s a syringe. He knows how that routine goes, awfully, intimately well.

 _The sweet stink of death all around him, the blackened, rotting grin. You can take my special medicine, little bird, or we can paint the floor with your brains. Either way- none of you are ever going to poison my Bats with your family_ stink _ever again, y’hear?_

_A strike to the left temple. To the mouth._

_Y’hear?_

_Tim had been so scared._

He bets Jason’s scared now.

All Jason needs to do is choose death. Joker will clear out and Tim can come in and they’ll be gone before the dynamite ever catches, before anyone needs to get hurt. If he takes the other way out- there’s no way that Tim can move that fast, and then Jason won’t remember him, or Gotham, or anything at all. Tim doesn’t know how to watch that happen.

Below him, Jason is crying. Tim can’t-

can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like. Here, again, after all these years. Can’t picture what has been done to Jason, in the hours he’s been gone, for him to break down like this.

“Needle,” Jason says, barely audible. Tim can’t breathe. “Needle.”

The Joker cackles, raises the syringe again in triumph.  “You birds, you’re all the same, huh?”

There’s- there’s nothing Tim can do. He knows this instantaneously. Even if he jumps now- he can’t get there before the needle makes contact, there’s nothing he can _do-_

As he gets the last screw off of the vent, Joker plunges his hand down. He jumps and falls and he’s too _late,_ too late, can only watch in crystal-clear definition as the needle arcs downwards, as Jason’s eyes close,

as glass shatters, liquid spills, the Joker pulls his hand back, cursing, as an arrow thuds into the opposite wall.

Oh, hello, Roy Harper. Guess that phone call got through after all.

Tim lands in a crouch, brings his bo staff around and sweeps Joker’s legs out from under him.

Roy meets his eyes. He’s been concealed behind crates of TNT, Joker’s own backup plan. “Red Robin. Should’ve known.”

Joker rises; his henchmen advance. The two of them flank Jason’s chair, one on either side, and fall, tiredly, into fight. Between them Jay groans, falls silent.

Tim tries to remember his blurry training, uses the staff, then elbows and knees and fists when he loses it. But he’s been out of this game for a _very_ long time, and he’s up against a wall, surrounded, by the time Steph and Cass arrive. It’s easier after that, and when Bruce and Dick and Damian appear to mop up it becomes safe to abandon the conflict, move to untie Jason.

His eyelids are fluttering; his hair damp with sweat. Gaze flickering between Tim and Roy like they’re precious. Tim’s missed him enough to last lifetimes.

“You came back,” he says, raspy, talking to both of them but looking at Tim. He shakes with the effort of staying upright; Tim’s heart _aches_.

“Yeah,” Tim says, allows his forehead to drop onto Jason’s shoulder, just for a second, like he’s been wanting.

The air smells like blood and violence and he’s tired, tired in his bones, and he’s surrounded by most everyone he loves, and things will be alright.

“Yeah, we’re here. I'm here.”

Joker looms, leers, somehow separated from the conflict. A match sparks in his hand even as the Bat lunges: Tim is suddenly aware of the mountains of explosive surrounding them. He will not let this be done to Jason a second time.

Then there’s shouting, and fire, and they’re running, fleeing together, as a unit, capes flapping against the starless night. Behind them the warehouse is engulfed in a fireball, the heat and weight of it enormous, terrifying. But Tim’s family are around him and Jason’s safe by his side, if limping a little, this time.

Jay must be thinking this too. He squeezes Tim’s hand a little harder as the embers rain down.

 _I love you too,_ it says.

_I love you, too._

\-----

_‘this is not the way I plan on living for the rest of my life,_

_but for right now, it gets me by._

_it gets me by.’_

\-----

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment if you enjoyed!! and if you'd like me to explore anything else about this weird halfway-universe i've created, or wanna know what happens next, just say the word!! i'd love to chat with you guys!!  
> -k8 <3


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